History

On 3 November 1998, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, marking the beginning to SMA's history.

Its aim was to promote global science and engineering education and research. It was one of the first partnerships between Singapore universities and a top overseas university, forged to help transform Singapore into a global world-class tertiary education. With the combined resources of the three premier academic institutions, SMA is the world's largest interactive distance education initiative, offering its students access to vastly rich faculty expertise and world-class research facilities.

SMA's five full-time programmes were launched in stages. The Advanced Materials for Micro- and Nano-Systems (AMM&NS) and the High Performance Computation for Engineered Systems (HPCES) programmes were both launched in July 1999. These were followed by the Innovation in Manufacturing Systems and Technology (IMST) programme in July 2000 and the Molecular Engineering of Biological and Chemical Systems (MEBCS) and Computer Science (CS) programmes in July 2001.

SMA had its first enrolment of 63 students, both local and from around Asia in July 1999. This increased to 70 in July 2000, 149 in July 2001 and 184 in July 2002. A total of 479 students have enrolled until the 2002/2003 intake. As of 30 June 2003, 426 students have graduated and 33 students are on the Ph.D. track.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nanyang Technological University

The Signing Ceremony of the MOU between MIT, NUS and NTU in 1998

The Signing Ceremony of the SMA-2 MOU between MIT, NUS and NTU in 2003 to take SMA to the next level of graduate education and research in science and engineering