REsearch And Commercialisation Hub

Media Release
For Immediate Dissemination
Total: 7 pages
A*STAR’S I2R UNVEILS REACH@I2R (REsearch And Commercialisation Hub)
TO BOOST DEEPER INTEGRATION WITH INDUSTRY
Innovations within REACH @I2R: Over SGD$50 million invested by our industry partners to
further develop leading-edge technologies for translation into industry impact
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1. Singapore, 13 March 2014 – A*STAR’s Institute for Infocomm Research (I R) officially
opened REACH@I2R (REsearch And Commercialisation Hub), adopting a Whole-of-I2R
approach in bringing the diverse and relevant range of scientific capabilities to engage with
local and global businesses on a long term strategic basis. The various economic verticals
include the Energy, Finance, Healthcare, Media and Entertainment, Telecommunications,
and Transportation sectors. Located on one floor within I2R’s premises at Fusionopolis, the
hub comprises 13 joint laboratories, a result of I2R’s collaborations with local and
international organisations such as: Baidu Inc; BYD Company Limited; DBS Bank; McLaren
Applied Technologies; National Healthcare Group; NCS Group; NEC Asia Pacific; Land
Transport Authority; Ping An Insurance Group; Singapore Power Group; SingTel; ST
Electronics; Topcon Corporation, Japan. Details of the individual joint laboratories are
available in Annex A.
2. The joint laboratories represent sustained collaboration engagements from I2R to apply
its dedicated resources to meet the specific needs of the industry and accelerate technology
capabilities building with its partners. The joint laboratories have garnered over SGD$50
million investment from the joint laboratory partners, with I2R contributing laboratory space
and research expertise. Currently, there are more than 130 R&D personnel working in these
joint laboratories and I2R expects these numbers to increase as more research projects are
defined and initiated down the road.
3. The first I2R joint laboratory collaboration kick-started in July 2012 with Baidu Inc., the
leading Chinese language internet search provider. Since then, the research and
development areas of the joint laboratories collaborations have spread across multiple
technology verticals to include intelligent speech technologies, healthcare, communications,
data analytics, autonomous vehicle technologies, and grid networks. To date, successful
innovations that have been developed include:
•
A voice recognition unlock feature with Baidu for the Lenovo A586 smartphone
•
Vision-related technology in the areas of visual acuity assessment, augmented reality
laser surgery and eye disease detection through the Advanced Vision and Technology
Alliance (AVATA) – I2R-NHG Innovation Lab with National Healthcare Group Eye Institute @
Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
•
Technologies that detect major eye disorders and diseases such as myopia, glaucoma,
and age-related macular degeneration (AMD) faster and more accurately, as a result of the
ATLANTIA lab with Topcon Corporation
4. Building on the momentum gained from these 13 joint laboratories, I2R will be
establishing more joint laboratories with key strategic industry partners in order to promote a
vibrant infocomm ecosystem that addresses the needs of the various industry verticals.
5. Dr. Tan Geok Leng, Executive Director of A*STAR’s Science and Engineering Research
Council (SERC), said, “At A*STAR, we strive to deliver high quality research in key
disciplines that will address industry needs. In a short span of less than two years, I2R has
opened 13 joint laboratories with local and global organisations bringing in tremendous
investments into Singapore. This enables collaboration partners to optimise their productivity
and boost innovation for their respective sectors. I congratulate I2R on this joyous occasion.”
6. Dr. Lee Shiang Long, Executive Director of I2R said, “Today’s official opening of our 13
joint laboratories marks a new milestone for I2R. The opening of REACH@I2R demonstrates
I2R’s efforts to meet our vision of powering a vibrant and strong infocomm ecosystem for
Singapore. This innovation hub is an excellent showcase of innovations within REACH,
where “Research Reaches Industry” and “Industry Reaches Research” - a place to develop
innovations to meet our partners’ needs and where the industry can tap on I2R’s exciting
technologies to strengthen their competitiveness in the global market. Our partners will be
able to better understand and meet the needs of their customers with the innovations
developed from the joint laboratories.”
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7. The World Economic Forum places Singapore as second in the Networked Readiness Index
(NRI)1, which ranks economies that are best placed to benefit from new information and
communication technologies (ICTs). The ranking shows that Singapore is utilising science
and technology to boost higher productivity, economic growth and quality jobs in the current
economic environment. The establishment of REACH@I2R, the largest cluster of co-located
joint laboratories in Singapore, supports this by addressing the ICT needs for Singapore’s
economy, providing a platform for public-private partnership that goes beyond ad hoc
collaborations, and equipping industry partners with a competitive edge in the global market.
Enclosed: ANNEX A – List of Joint Labs at REACH@I2R
-End-
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The official opening of REACH@I R was graced by A*STAR Chairman, Mr Lim Chuan
Poh (front row, third from left) and attended by the joint laboratory partners.
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Ranking compiled by the World Economic Forum for its Global Information Technology Report 2013:
http://www.weforum.org/issues/global-information-technology
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ANNEX A
LIST OF JOINT LABS AT REACH@I2R:
1) AVATA (Advanced Vision And Technology Alliance) Innovation Lab with NHG Eye
Institute @ Tan Tock Seng Hospital
• Develop impactful capabilities and technologies focused on eye and vision-related
treatment, care and health
• Develop a suite of state-of-the-art clinical assistance technologies that will aid clinicians
in their clinical tasks to improve procedures, outcomes and effectiveness in patient
treatment and care
• To serve as an incubation ground for I2R to test and refined newly developed
technologies in a controlled clinical environment
2) Baidu-I2R Research Centre (BIRC)
• To conduct research on Southeast Asian language processing
• To utilise I2R’s technologies for the semantic search engine feature called “box
computing”
• In November 2012, BIRC announced the first speaker verification technology would be
integrated into the Lenovo A586 smartphone with built-In voiceprint feature. The
smartphone is the first in the industry that incorporates this Speaker Verification
technology into its operating system. With this distinctive feature, an authorized user can
unlock the smartphone simply by speaking a passphrase, without the need to use PINs,
passwords or finger swipe patterns
3) I2R – BYD Joint Lab
• To support I2R’s AV capabilities building in the area of providing their vehicle platform,
and assisting to build our I2R AV platform for sensors, integration and data collection
through the BYD e-taxi fleet on the road
• To support I2R-BYD’s EV/AV R&D and Test-bedding Roadmap in Singapore and to
provide a framework for initiating, execution; and governance of all joint-collaboration
between the Parties in Singapore
• Leveraging BYD as the first partner (vehicle manufacturer) in our AV programme to
garner other partners like Continental, STK, to help support the Eco-System Platform I2R
is building
4) DBS – I2R Joint Lab
• Leveraging analytics and insights to create new ways of engaging customers and
building relationships through the new of new technology
• Developing commercial and executable solutions and products in mobile technology,
social platforms and other leading-edge technologies, driven around a customer
experience centred design
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5) I2R – McLaren Applied Technologies Joint Lab
• Predictive Analytics, Modelling and Simulation for the Transportation, Energy,
Healthcare and Wellness industries
6) I2R – NCS Joint Lab
• Building up NCS Business Intelligence capabilities to help our customers analyse and
visualise the enterprise data to provide actionable, timely and predictive
recommendations.
• Harnessing insights and creating value by ‘taming’ the big data through Predictive
Analytics and transformational technologies.
• Paving the way to develop potential and new areas in communications and sensors
technologies.
7) I2R – NEC APAC Joint Lab
• Social Analytics in the areas of Urban Surveillance, Infrastructure Maintenance and
Management, Smart Energy and others.
8) I2R – Land Transport Authority Joint Lab
• Leveraging Data Analytics to facilitate deeper understanding of road transport system for
better decision making
• Intelligent Transport System technologies
• To act as a framework and window for collaborations between LTA & A*STAR
9) I2R – Ping An Insurance Group
• Advanced predictive analytics for customer profiling, sales analytics as risk profiling for
Insurance and Banking
• Goal is to improve its sales closure rate and cross selling across Life, Motor insurance,
Property and Banking segments
10) I2R – Singapore Power Joint Lab
• Singapore Power Group (SP) is a leading energy utility group in the Asia Pacific. It owns
and operates electricity and gas transmission and distribution businesses in Singapore
and Australia. Over a million industrial, commercial and residential customers in
Singapore benefit from Singapore Power's world-class transmission, distribution and
market support services
• With increasingly sophisticated energy demands, Singapore Power has been actively
participating in research and development on Smart Grid technologies. The I2RSingapore Power Joint Lab initiative is an expansion of Singapore Power’s efforts in this
direction
• The team is leveraging research and development to devise game-changing solutions
for Singapore's grid network and develop sustainable solutions to our customers. One
key development is TV White Space Mesh Networking solution to support diverse
applications such as pervasive online condition monitoring. The team is also harnessing
the latest advancements in data communications and pushing the limits of information
and communications technology. The aim is to develop solutions for greater grid
reliability and efficiency, and to deliver smarter operations
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11) I2R – SingTel Joint Lab
• Develop advanced DA for personalized, relevant information/services to mobile users,
and glean deeper customer insights through existing data assets
12) I2R – ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) Joint Lab
• To support ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) roadmap in Software Defined
Communications Systems
• To jointly execute all I2R - ST Electronics (Info-Comm Systems) on-going and new
related projects
• To develop manpower and capabilities in communications and network waveform
technology
13) I2R - Topcon Innovation Lab
• Development of image analysis technique based on Swept-source OCT
• Development of technologies for new imaging modality with Portable SLO system
• Development of software solutions for Topcon web viewer system for Medical
Application Store
For media enquiries, please contact:
Ms Doris Yang
Senior Officer, Corporate Communications
for Institute for Infocomm Research
DID: (65) 6419 6525
Email: [email protected]
About Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)
Singapore’s largest ICT research institute, I2R (pronounced as i-squared-r) is a member of the
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) family. Established in 2002, our vision
is to power a vibrant and strong infocomm ecosystem in Singapore. I2R focuses on conducting
mission oriented research to address key challenges faced locally. At I2R, intelligence,
communications and media (ICM) form our 3 strategic thrusts. Our research capabilities are in
information technology, wireless and optical communication networks, interactive and digital
media, sensors, signal processing and computing. We perform R&D in ICM technologies to
develop holistic solutions across the ICM value chain and we believe that the greatest impact is
created when research outcomes are translated into technologies our partners can readily
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deploy at a competitive advantage. For more information about I2R, please visit www.i2r.astar.edu.sg.
About the Agency for Science, Technology and Research
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is Singapore's lead public sector
agency that fosters world-class scientific research and talent to drive economic growth and
transform Singapore into a vibrant knowledge-based and innovation driven economy.
In line with its mission-oriented mandate, A*STAR spearheads research and development in
fields that are essential to growing Singapore’s manufacturing sector and catalysing new growth
industries. A*STAR supports these economic clusters by providing intellectual, human and
industrial capital to its partners in industry.
A*STAR oversees 18 biomedical sciences and physical sciences and engineering research
entities, located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis, as well as their vicinity. These two R&D hubs
house a bustling and diverse community of local and international research scientists and
engineers from A*STAR’s research entities as well as a growing number of corporate
laboratories.
For more information about A*STAR, please visit www.a-star.edu.sg
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