NERI forges MOU with Thermo Fisher Scientific on Metabolomics of Urban Water Systems

NERI, Thermo Fisher Scientific and SCELSE representatives at the MOU Signing Ceremony.

On 21st January 13, NERI and Thermo Fisher Scientific inked a Memorandum of Understanding to further strengthen their collaboration on the study of Metabolomics of Urban Water Systems. The Signing Ceremony was held at the Singapore Expo in conjunction with the opening of the 2nd Water Research Conference in Singapore.

The collaboration will bring together researchers from NERI and the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering or SCELSE (SCELSE, a Research Centre of Excellence jointly hosted by NTU and NUS, has been a major collaborator in the study of urban water cycle) to examine how metabolomes relate to the functioning of microbes in the urban water systems.

Also under this collaboration, NERI existing facilities will be enhanced by Thermo Fisher Scientific, which allows the research expertise to achieve the following objectives:

i. to better understand and enhance the self-purification capacity of urban waterways that use natural processes to reduce or remove nutrient and contaminant loads in surface water, and
ii. to understand the metabolic basis of wastewater purification in order to improve the processes involved.

One of NERI's strategic programmes, Singapore Peking Oxford Research Enterprise (SPORE) for Water Eco-Efficiency, will also be part of this collaboration. SPORE and SCELSE have been working together on experimental and environmental biofilms in managing urban water cycle. The collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific will further strengthen SPORE and SCELSE's research efforts to deliver a comprehensive understanding of microbial systems in achieving water eco-efficiency.