SMART - Singapore MIT Alliance for Research and Technology

Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology

Biosystems and Micromechanics

BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) Inter-Disciplinary Research Group

BioSyM PIs / Collaborators awarded SMART Innovation Centre Grants

Modelled after the successful Desphande Center for Technological Innovation, SMART’s Innovation Centre administers two grant programs.  The Innovation Grant (up to S$250,000) is designed to help faculty and their research team explore new avenues of market-driven research and participate in programmes that will help accelerate innovations toward commercialisation. The Explorer Grant (up to S$50,000) is a student focused grant programme that assists students or student groups, with their faculty mentor, explore further development and commercialisation of innovative work originated by the student(s). 
 
In the First Edition of the Innovations Grant, following 3 project proposals submitted by BioSyM PIs and collaborators have been selected for the award among others. 
  • A Platform to Prime Peripheral Blood Monocytes for Induction into Multi and Pluripotency – Phase 1 (NUS) – Ignition Grant: A revolutionary method to extract therapeutic stem cells from peripheral blood (Michael Raghunath, Anna Blocki)
  • Three-dimensional Microfluidic Assays for Cancer Drug Screening (SMART): A novel microfluidic assays to screen drugs to prevent cancer metastases (Roger Kamm, Seok Chung, Joseph Charest, Harry Asada).
  • Water Purification for Remote Location (MIT): A very low energy method to convert seawater into drinkable water (Jongyoon Han, Nam-Trung Nguyen, Sung Jae Kim).