Interview with Prof Low Teck Seng

Tan Cheng Peng: Good morning. For this year’s edition of the SMI Horizon interview, we have with us today Professor Low Teck Seng, Senior Vice President at the National University of Singapore, and recently appointed Chairman of SMI in 2023. 

Thank you, Chairman for taking today’s SMI interview. Prior to your current role as the Senior Vice President of Sustainability and Resilience at the National University of Singapore, you were the CEO of the National Research Foundation for 10 years and before that, Managing Director of A*STAR. Could you share briefly on your work in NRF and A*STAR, and what were some of the national strategic imperatives that guided Singapore government’s philosophy on investments in R&D?

Prof Low Teck Seng: Well, my association with R&D in Singapore and science and technology started way back in 1991. That is when Singapore decided that we should invest in R&D, in science and technology in a serious fashion. At that juncture in time, we were at a very low base as far as we are concerned globally. The impression that we had was that if we had to compete regionally and globally, we have to invest in our assets, and that is people and our ability to actually build on science and technology base.  The National Science and Technology board was formed, and I was given the opportunity to build a research institute in data storage. The choice of data storage was quite obvious because we were the anchor in terms of the manufacture of disk drives globally. All the major companies were here. That essentially is the start of our journey in R&D in Singapore. 

This first five-year plan, which started in 1991, was a $2 billion plan, and I always say that this is the point where we seriously decided that we are going to invest in science and technology. Subsequently, we doubled our investments, the following five years to $4 billion and then to $6 billion. I will say that in the first 15 years of our journey, our focus was primarily based on our economic narrative. What drove us was the science and technology we need to do to support the industry landscape we have in Singapore, how we climb the technology ladder, and also to build a technology base for the investments in industries that we want to have subsequently. So this economic narrative is still central to our strategic approach in guiding us what to invest in. But I would say in the last 10 years, there is a dual narrative that has emerged. This is the imperatives that Singapore needs to address. These are the issues that Singapore needs to address. A clear example is water. This all started with the establishment of the National Research Foundation in 2006, and this widened the horizons of our ambitions. With this dual approach, they guide our strategic perspective of what we will invest in. The economic narrative is still important, but today we have built a very sound knowledge base to support investments into Singapore of leading-edge technologies and companies. At the same time, we have built the wherewithal to support solutions and solution options for ourselves addressing key issues that we need to face up to. What are they? They are in water; they are in energy. They are in addressing climate change for ourselves; they are in addressing aging; they are in addressing pandemics, for example. So this dual approach guides us as to what we invest in, because we are a small country, our resources are limited. Even with $25 billion in our latest five-year plan, it’s still very small. Hence, we need to have a slightly top-down approach in our plans and strategies. But we need to harness the ideas bottoms up from the ecosystem, from the bright people we have with us. That essentially is the strategic approach we have taken. Today, I would like to think that we have built for ourselves over the last 30 years, a very very sound knowledge base, a very very thick knowledge base on which we can actually build, and have pillars of strength and pillars of great expertise from which we can capitalise on and hopefully this will stand in good stead going to the future. 

We are in a seventh-year plan. I will say that today we have in our ecosystem two great universities, a very very respectable and well recognised research institute organisation in A*STAR, and we have a talent base that sees us having some of the top talent in the world in key technology areas, be it in the biomedical sciences or in physical sciences like in microtronics, and in quantum technologies.

Tan Cheng Peng: Thank you, Chairman. What are some of the key insights learnt on research and innovation for Singapore, and how can SMI leverage on these lessons to help us achieve our vision for Singapore to become a global maritime knowledge and innovation hub?

Prof Low Teck Seng: I think the national journey has taught us that our resources are limited, and hence we need to be focused in our approach. Having decided that strategic perspective, then there are several key pieces that we need to have in place to ensure success ourselves. Essentially, the first and most important piece is talent, our ability to attract the best talent in the world to come. Now coupled with this, is our ambition to provide opportunities for our own indigenous talent to develop to the fullest of their potential. With this dual approach, hopefully, we will have the talent in Singapore to address the technology and research questions that we want to ask that is relevant to us. Now, with this in place, we then need to see how we are able to get the community to work together. Because we are a small country, it does mean that we must work better together – the universities, the research institutes. If you take to the next bound to where you want to be and want to go to, we need to see how our research performers are able to work with industry and our agencies better. This basically will support our ambitions for translation. 

Now if you look in the case of SMI. SMI supports the ambitions the MPA has. MPA has particular needs and particularly ambitions to where we want to bring our port to in the next bound. That clearly defines the scope of interest in technology for ourselves. If we are to address this, we want to then bring in the best talent to work on the questions we want to ask. At the same time, we want to see whether we can attract the companies that we work with to run alongside us as we journey on this technology pathway for developing new technologies, addressing some of the critical issues that the industry faces up to, as well as hopefully being in the lead in some of these technology areas to ensure that we are competitive.

Tan Cheng Peng: Zooming in on maritime, one of the most important agenda for Maritime Singapore and MPA is decarbonisation transition. The government has recently raised the national climate target to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, and for the government sector, by 2045. What do you think are the key developments and advances that need to be made by Maritime Singapore to meet these targets? How can maritime R&D contribute to this effort and what are the key research breakthroughs that are needed?

Prof Low Teck Seng: Well, climate change is real, and one of the things that we must do is to ensure that we put in mitigating measures as best as we can, not by ourselves, but also with the global community. One of the mitigating measures is decarbonisation, and we have taken upon ourselves with the ambition to go to carbon net zero. Similarly, the port and the maritime industry need to do likewise. It is clear that distributed carbon in the maritime sector contributes to a significant amount, not a huge amount, but significant. As such, we need to ensure that we are aligned with the global imperatives in ensuring that we do our part in mitigating. I think the shipping and maritime industry will be driven to decarbonise. Us as a port that plays host to many of the ships going around the world, will need to play our part to ensure that we go green. So if you look at our ports, the key for us is to see whether we can actually move towards a carbon net zero environment. Which means that, alongside other parts of our economy and ecosystem, is to electrify.  In Singapore we have the ambitions to electrify our land transport system. So similarly, we can electrify all vessels in our ports, the supply ships, the tugboats, etc. So that clearly is something that is doable. What it does for electrification is to concentrate on a carbon source and by doing so, it will mean that we are more able to do carbon capture and utilisation and hence, contribute to the decarbonisation ambitions that we have. 

The other thing that we need to be clear about is that you know the fuel source for shipping will change, and we need to be ready to receive ships with all kinds of green fuels, whether they are methanol, whether they are ammonia driven or in the future, some form of hydrogen carriers, or it could be formic acid. Hydrogen can be carried in different forms. Green energy can come in different forms. Where the winner is, we do not know yet, but I think early signs show that methanol and ammonia will be first to be utilised for shipping. For that reason, we need to be ready for this. If we are going to be ready to receive vessels using these fuels, we must be cognizant of the different needs that they demand. One, which includes the fuel supply, but two for us is the safety aspects of these ships. So those I will be concerned for ourselves. So, there is a series of things we need to be aware of and need to address, from fuels to maritime safety, to the electrification of a port which includes potentially the transformation of the port grid system, and how it interacts with the national grid. So all these need to be addressed. I do not think there is a very basic science research to be done in these areas. But there are lots of development work that needs to be done, to ensure that we are able to deploy these technologies as we transform ourselves.

Tan Cheng Peng: Moving aside from decarbonisation, the maritime industry is also facing disruption from digitalisation, such as advanced analytics, remote operations, autonomous shipping with the advent of 5/6G communications and IoT technology. What do you think are the major challenges of digitalisation for the industry to adopt these technologies, as well as the opportunities that digitalisation presents?

Prof Low Teck Seng: Well, digitalisation has been with us for a while and will continue to advance and expand. It is driven by three big things. One is compute power, two is the ability of massive storage capability, three connectivity. With these three in place, it supports data analytics, it supports AI, it supports what we today call large language models, which gives us ChatGPT. With these all in place, if we want to utilise these to the limit that we want, we need to have security, we need to have trust, we need to have privacy. Now with all these in place, the transformation of industries, the transformation of government, the transformation of the way we live is going to be real. This will impact the industry that we are talking about – the maritime industry. So we have to be ready for it. In fact, it is already ongoing – the application of data analytics, the application of AI in everything that we do, including the maritime industry, is real. We need to optimise for example, voyages. We need to optimise the way we do things. In land transport, we want to go driverless. We want to go through to the management of vessels that are autonomous without the need for any people piloting it. This is the way we are going to move forward going into the future. 

The march of technology will continue relentlessly. Essentially, this gives us a few things. One, efficiency. Two, it actually provides us with the opportunity to actually support a lot of our ambitions in decarbonisation. If you are able to optimise for example voyages, it does mean that we are going to run that vessel in the most efficient manner. So, shipping supports trade and trade will be digitalised, and that has already been happening over time. So you will see the application of all the technologies that I talked about – data analytics, AI, security, trust, privacy, and the use of large language models in ChatGPT, and facilities like this. It will continue to expand and we do not know what is going to come next. But as we have read in many, many publications, we are moving into a world of AI. AI will take over many things, but not everything. But you know this will continue to impact the industry we are in.

Tan Cheng Peng: Chairman, earlier you mentioned the importance of research talent, and attracting the right maritime talent is essential for the future growth of the industry. How can we further excite and attract more young talent for the maritime R&D sector to join as researchers in our institutes of higher learning, centres of excellence and national research institutes?

Prof Low Teck Seng: Well, talent is always a big issue for us in Singapore. That is why everything we do in R&D, in science and technology, we try to ensure that we are able to attract the best in the world to come. At the same time, provide every opportunity for our young people to develop themselves. Talent is required in a whole slew of different industries and technology sectors that we have been involved in, in microelectronics, in quantum technologies. From Singapore’s perspective, we need a lot of people interested in sustainability, in water, in energy. That is an issue that we also face in the maritime industry. So young people are attracted by a few things. Attracted by interesting work, they are attracted by challenges. But it is inevitable that young people are also attracted by the prospects of a career that will support their ability to actualise themselves, but also the issue of renumeration, whether they are rewarded well. It is a combination of all these factors that will attract young people into the industry. So it is very much up to the industry leaders and technology leaders associated with this industry, to be able to articulate the excitement in the industry we are in. We are competing with other very exciting opportunities for these young people – the crypto world, the quantum world. A lot of young people are going green these days. They are looking at sustainability; they are looking at nature-based solutions. They are looking at food, alternative proteins. So there are many, many competing opportunities for young people, and we are in that space. So, my view is that it is going to be a challenge. The necessity is for us to get our leaders to be able to evangelise a little, to tell young people how exciting this industry can be.

Tan Cheng Peng: Prof, earlier you also mentioned about the importance of industry partners, and collaboration among stakeholders in the ecosystem as a key enabler, and multiplier of our limited resources, and potential impact of our R&D work. So having visited all the Centres of Excellence over the past three months, and the research programmes funded by SMI, what more do you think can be done by SMI to catalyse the research community and industry partners and encourage greater collaboration? 

Prof Low Teck Seng: In Singapore we invest in R&D, not because we are just excited about discovery science. We invest because we are driven by the economic narrative as I described earlier, and more recently, because of the need to develop a science base for ourselves, so that we are able to develop solutions or solution options to some of the key issues that we face up to as a nation. Having done so, we want to ensure that there is a pathway for what we do in science towards deployment, and that requires translation, whether it is out for deployment by agencies in solving some of our issues, or to industry. In fact, that is a necessary next step. Otherwise, as we in electric engineering say, that is an open loop. We need to close the loop. We need to ensure that the outcome from the investments we have made in R&D translate out for use, for deployment, for translation to industry products. With that, hopefully that generates economic activity, and that also provides us with solutions to some of the key issues that we are addressing. Which means that you need the participation of industry clearly in everything that we do. But that does not detract from the fact that we need to still invest in basic science. But having done so, we need to ensure that there is translation now, and that requires working with industry. 

Nationally, you will see NRF promoting different schemes, to ensure there is an incentive for companies to work with our research performers. This seems to be more natural in more developed nations like in the United States, in Germany. In Germany, the Mittelstands, the large SMEs work very very closely with the universities, with the Fraunhofer Institutes. The big companies of course do it very well. In the United States, you will find lots of company at the doorsteps of MIT and Stanford to pull technology out. In Singapore, we need to have schemes to facilitate this. We have a corporate lab schemes, we have different schemes to support this partnership between research performers and industry. 

Likewise in SMI, what we have done is to actually have very focused investment in our centres of excellence in particular areas. From my visits, I have seen tremendous amount of good work being done. But our ambition is to see the vibrancy in the translation of what we do with industry, which means that the outcomes from our centres of excellence need to be curated, and there needs to be facilitation in supporting their work with industry. They already do some, some do better than others, but I think we can do better on three counts. One, I say is the curation and how we are able to work with the centres of excellence. But here I think we need to curate not only them singly, but to see how we can actually bring the IPs and expertise and the knowledge from the different Institutes together, and different centres of excellence together and work with the industry. So, this curation needs to be looked at to see how we are more able to bring the centres of excellence to work together better. Two, I think the companies looking into us need a facilitation in more effective interaction with all our centres of excellence. Now, what do I mean? If I am a company interested in working with six different CoEs, is quite onerous right? So how can we make it easier for them to do so? So this is the second. The third is that all our centres of excellence sit in a much more bigger ecosystem. We support cybersecurity, we support AI in the maritime industry. At the same time, we have a bigger ecosystem. There is AI Singapore. So we need to ensure that every one of our centres of excellence is cognizant of what is the greater ecosystem amongst us, and to ensure that they are able to tap on the resources where appropriate. Then there is one additional thing. If we do this all well together, then we can explore how we can actually partner internationally to support our ambitions. That will be the next step for us. So in this way, I think we can be more effectively working with industry. I think there is a big role for SMI to play in this. We need to have a dialogue with our centres of excellence to see how and what we need to put in place. At the same time, we need to tie up with our industry partners to see what are their needs and their wants, and to see how we can actually match the research performers with industry.

Tan Cheng Peng: Thank you. We are coming to the close of the interview. Chairman, any final words of wisdom that you would like to share with SMI’s friends and partners in the industry?

Prof Low Teck Seng: Well, I have no words of wisdom, but some very practical things. One, I think we want to share with all our industry partners that Singapore stands ready to work together with them, and we are on our pathway to transforming the port we have, which is a leading-edge port, and we want to ensure that we remain so. Two, we want to share with all our research partners in the universities and research institutes that, we will support them in the journey that we are on, and we hope that they will continue to be able to be attractive to some of the best talent in the world, and to be able to work with us in the translating of everything that we do out to industry. So this ecosystem building is going to be a journey that does not end. It is one that keeps on evolving, and we hope to walk it alongside our researchers as well as our industry partners.

Tan Cheng Peng: Thank you very much for your insightful sharing at today’s interview.

Prof Low Teck Seng: You are most welcome, Cheng Peng. Thank you very much.