Top US varsity opens digital sciences research centre in Singapore
By Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 12 February 2009 1310 hrs

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SINGAPORE - A top US university has opened a digital sciences research centre at Singapore's Fusionopolis.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Illinois) opened the Advanced Digital Sciences Centre (ADSC) at Singapore's science and technology hub on Thursday.

The campus is the university's first research facility outside the United States.

The university was recently ranked in the top five in many engineering disciplines and counts YouTube's co-founders and Microsoft's chief software architect among its alumni.

The ADSC's first project is the Human Sixth Sense Programme (HSSP).

The HSSP will enable computers to operate with a "sixth sense" so that users are given information that is relevant to them, delivered in a high-resolution, multimedia format on any device, anytime and anywhere, and across a secure setting.

"A positive outcome of HSSP could be the sending of timely information directly to the mobile devices of fire-fighters who are trapped in burning buildings to inform them of the best escape routes," the university and A*STAR said in a statement on Thursday.

"The information of escape routes would have been derived by 'sixth sense' from analysing the existing blueprints and infrastructure."

The centre’s director, Professor Benjamin Wah, said: "It could be in text, images or video. It's like a big Google. But the information you get today on Google may not be the most reliable information.

"You may not trust the information and you may be sceptical about the information you get on the Web. But here, we want to develop a system so that information can be obtained in the most trustworthy and reliable fashion."

He expects the technology to be ready in the next five years for several industries, including medical, security and the media.

The project is just one of many collaborations expected between Singapore and Illinois researchers at the new Advanced Digital Sciences Centre. Other research projects planned include media technologies, robotics, energy programmes and bioinformatics.

Professor Wah said that he is also looking forward to partnerships with scientists at Singapore's other hub, Mediapolis.

He said: "The media technologies is one key component in Singapore in the collaboration. There are many good ideas that are being developed over there. We don't have to replicate what they're doing. It can be a form of delivery, way of delivering information to the human programme."

He said the economic returns of these projects will be "tremendous" along with the benefits the new technologies can bring to the community at large.

The centre is set to be operational from June, with 70 full-time scientists and students. Of these, 25 are post-doctoral researchers, 40 research students and five permanent faculty members.

"Other positive outcomes could also include allowing doctors across continents simultaneous access to vast amounts of multimedia and textual medical database to treat diseases, and giving investors timely access to financial information to help them make prime investment decisions," added the statement.

- CNA/ir/vm