1995

Developments

The Institute of Molecular Agrobiology (IMA) was set up on 18 April to carry out world-class agrobiological research and to provide a strong knowledge infrastructure that would support the growth of the high-tech agro-industry in Singapore. A technology holding company, IMAGEN Holdings Pte Ltd, which would handle all investment matters of IMA, was incorporated in July.

In December, NUS set up the Centre for Biomedical Materials Applications and Technology (BIOMAT) to promote multi-disciplinary research and development in biomedical materials in Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region.

NUS Library in May became the first academic library in the region to launch the full-text electronic document management and retrieval system. Called Library InfoGate, the system was the first step towards the vision of a borderless library, and would ultimately provide library users desktop access to bibliographic data, full-text and full-image of selected library collections via the Internet.

The Materials Technology Enterprise (MTE) was set up in October to help manufacturing industries identify and develop core research capabilities in materials technology.

 

Achievements

The Education Division of the Institute of Systems Science became the first department in NUS to receive the ISO 9001 certification for its short courses, postgraduate programmes and joint projects.

At the Institute of Systems Science, the Apple-ISS Research Centre developed a Chinese speech-recognition software for use in personal computing which won the "Best Software Product" and the "Best of Best Product" awards at Comdex Asia in October.