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News Archive
The “Pitch for Success” event organised by the Nanyang Innovation & Enterprise Office (NIEO) on 18 November 2011, was a success which attracted more than 100 participants, from the local research centres, industries, and the government agencies. The event act as a platform to seek capital and funding for the commercial ready research achievements developed in NTU in the field of nanotechnology, biomedicine, clean technology, and electronic devices. Of numerous projects on display, two groups from MSE led by Professor Ma Jan and Associate Professor Alfred Tok Iing Yoong left a deep impression on the participants.
Professor Ma Jan and his group developed a novel manufacturing process to synthesize large-area graphene without substrate transferring and etching process, to produce transparent conductive films replacing ITO. Inspired from butterfly's wing photonic crystal structures, Associate Professor Alfred Tok Iing Yoong's group adopted an atomic layer deposition technique to fabricate high quality electrochromic photonic crystals as an interlayer in the glass, enabling a smart window to change colors, block UV, heat, and sunlight.
A research team led by MSE’s Assistant Professor Joachim Loo and Assistant Professor Ng Kee Woei found potential links between nano-size ingredient, Zinc Oxide, which is commonly used in sunscreen, and cancer risk. The findings from this study was published in the November 2011 issue of Biomaterials, one of the world’s top journals in the field of biomaterials research. The findings prompted companies to reassess the health impact of materials when used in nano-sized.
This study is one of the few pioneer projects in the field of Nanotoxicology. Nanotoxicology studies the properties of materials in nano-sized and its toxicity. This field of study pioneer by Assistant Professor Loo and Assistant Professor Ng is still at its infancy stage.
We are pleased to announce that one of our MSE Alumni, Mr. Vincent Lau and his team was featured recently in The Straits Times on 23 August for their outstanding innovation. Vincent and team founded a start-up company Paywhere, which aims to storm the social network platform with their proprietary product called TackThis!
TackThis! is a social commerce platform that allows retailer to create and tack a shop widget to their Facebook, blog or website within minutes. With TackThis! it also allow consumer to advertise for e-retailer by replicating and tacking the online shops to their own websites. The team was also awarded grant from Spring Singapore’s Young Entrepreneurs Scheme for Start-ups (YES! Start-up), to support their entrepreneur spirit and innovation.
This is not the first award won by Vincent, neither is it the first company founded by him. Back in 2006, while still an undergraduate in MSE, Vincent developed a new conceptual electronic book which consumes less energy and made use of e-paper technology. With this concept, he won the Storage Unlimited Design Competition 2006. He also established a web design and development firm based in Singapore, with 2 other like-minded partners in 2006.
Vincent is currently the Vice-President for our MSE Alumni Association.
Our heartiest congratulations to Vincent and his team on their outstanding achievements.
We are pleased to announce that one of our alumna, Ms Grace Chew won the “Best Innovation Award” at this year’s Emerging Enterprise 2011 Awards. Ms Chew is the Technical Director of Hydroemission Corporation Pte Ltd and she led her team to win S$30,000 worth of prizes at the award ceremony held in Shangri-La Hotel on 23 June 2011.
Hydroemission specializes in developing biodegradable controlled release technology for environmental applications, such as water treatment, waste treatment, aquaculture and ambient scenting. Hydroemission has devised a novel process, which when coupled with its proprietary polymer blends, allows the conversion of most types of active ingredients into controlled release forms.
The Business Times and OCBC Bank first launched the inaugural Emerging Enterprise in 2008 to recognize outstanding small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore. Winners of the Emerging Enterprise receive attractive prizes to support their growth and development.
We are proud to announce that NTU will be partnering University of California at Berkeley on the “Singapore-Berkeley Initiative for Sustainable Energy” or SinbeRISE project under NRF’s CREATE programme.
On 13 June 2011, the National Research Foundation (NRF) announced 3 more research centres to be set up by top international research universities under its CREATE programme - the Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise.
The SinbeRISE project, one of the three projects announced, seeks to harvest solar energy for conversion into electricity as well as to liquid fuels. This research would help establish Singapore as a vibrant centre for leading edge solar energy research and a preferred location for global solar energy companies.
The stakeholders for this project include UC Berkeley, NTU (MSE, SCBE and SPMS) and NUS. A/P Thirumany Sritharan from MSE is the lead PI for NTU and the other MSE co-PIs include Prof Subodh Mhaisalkar, A/P Chen Zhong, A/P Wang Junling, Asst/P Lydia Helena Wong, Asst/P Joachim Loo, Asst/P Huo Fengwei, Asst/P Xue Can and Dr Nripan Mathews.
A four-person research team, lead by Asst/P Ng Kee Woei, had been working on a research project to extract Keratin from human hair, in a bid to tap into this easily available natural biomaterial. Keratin has displayed potential properties to accelerate the healing of wounds. The article in Lianhe Zaobao featured Asst/P Ng Kee Woei, Research Fellow, Dr Francesca Taraballi , post-graduate student, Wang Shuai, and final-year student, Sow Wan Ting,
Sow Wan Ting and Wang Shuai were selected to represent the team to present their research findings at the 5th Biomedical Engineering Society Scientific Meeting (BES5SM). The seminar was held in NTU on the 28 May 2011 and attended by more than 200 students, lecturers and researchers from Junior Colleges, Polytechnics and Universities.
We are proud to announce the partnership between NTU and Vestas in setting up a joint lab which will focus on “Materials Research for Wind Turbine Applications”.
This 3-year collaboration will bring together expertise from Vestas, MSE, MAE and ERI@N. The PIs are A/P Alfred Tok and Asst/P Zhang Qichun.
A research agreement signing ceremony was held on 3 June 2011 to mark the beginning of this joint lab collaboration. The Guests of Honour for this event were Prof Pan Tso-Chien, Dean of CoE and Mr Peter Cheng, MD and VP of Vestas Technology R&D, Singapore.
NTU’s Solar Fuels Lab – Asia’s first – which aims to create efficient and sustainable sources of hydrogen fuel from water by developing an “artificial leaf” device, is officially launched by NTU President-Designate Prof Bertil Andersson, a pioneer in artificial leaf research.
The lab will be jointly managed by NTU’s School of Materials Science and Engineering and the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERI@N). A seminar on solar fuel generation and artificial photosynthesis was also held in conjunction with the opening ceremony.
The primary objective of the researchers involved in NTU’s solar fuels programme is to develop a solar-driven technology that is commercially viable. The programme is led by Asst Prof Joachim Loo who will work with a team of NTU researchers and a stellar international research team that includes Professor James Barber, Professor Michael Gratzal, Dr Heinz Frei and Dr John Turner.
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