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IN CONVERSATION WITH THE NTU PRESIDENT
Our premier programmes also have an overseas the national healthcare scene, the School draws on
component built in. For example, students on the the resources of its primary healthcare partner, the
CN Yang Scholars Programme will now spend eight National Healthcare Group, and its sister institutions.
months abroad for their final-year research project,
where they work with distinguished researchers in What other new developments are there on the
world-class laboratories. education front?
We started the Asian School of the Environment,
The dual-degree Renaissance Engineering which has top faculty from NTU’s Earth Observatory
Programme, the first-choice engineering programme of Singapore, a S$150 million national Research
among top pre-university students in Singapore, Centre of Excellence. Being taught by world-class
offers a full year of studies at University of scientists is one of the ways that our students
Berkeley, California, and Imperial College London. benefit from NTU’s research.
Northwestern University will be added next year.
NTU has also kept up with the changing face of
The University Scholars Programme similarly learning in this digital age and we have extended the
comes with overseas learning from the first year, flipped classroom pedagogy to even more courses.
and a curriculum that challenges students to be Newly opened is The Hive, the centrepiece of the
intellectually daring and creative. flipped classroom learning approach which supports
broad forms of education, including the running of
Our medical students get that vital clinical student-managed social enterprises. Another large
perspective early on, with chances to go overseas learning hub is being built and will be ready by 2017.
to apply their skills and broaden their view of
medicine. Some of our students studying to be More of our top courses have also been brought
teachers have also taught in countries like Finland, to the world through Coursera, the Massive Open
Sweden and the United States. Online Course (MOOC) platform. We are pleasantly
surprised that MOOCs have received very high
What are the latest developments at the ratings from both users and third-party evaluators.
Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine? Our first three MOOCs collectively garnered nearly
Our medical school, a partnership with Imperial 200,000 enrolments!
College London, saw its largest intake of 90
students, up from the inaugural and second cohorts Can you also share some notable research
of 54 and 78 students respectively. The School’s developments in the past year?
innovative curriculum and strong ties to Imperial NTU continued to excel on the research front.
have proven to be draws among students and Once again, we secured more than S$500 million in
their parents. competitive grants, including more than S$42 million
to establish the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing,
Undergraduates undergo a curriculum built on a hot research area globally.
an ethos of patient-centred care and innovation
with team-based learning in flipped classrooms. With population ageing becoming a major issue in
The School’s new PhD programme takes a holistic many countries, including Singapore, NTU is scaling
“systems medicine” approach in addressing the up efforts to address some of these challenges.
needs of 21st century medical and healthcare A new life sciences research cluster at NTU will
research. study the link between the health of a population
and the environment. This includes Singapore’s
The medical school appointed three more first phenome centre and a S$30 million institute of
distinguished clinician-scientists: Prof Balázs structural biology led by Prof Daniela Rhodes FRS,
Gulyás, in the area of neuroscience and mental formerly of the Medical Research Council Laboratory
health, Prof Artur Schmidtchen, in dermatology of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
and skin biology, and Prof George Chandy, in
infection and immunity. They join metabolic disease NTU is also working with Singapore’s hospitals,
researcher Prof Bernhard Boehm, who oversees as a key partner in the S$100 million Rehabilitation
the metabolic disorders theme. Well-connected to Research Institute of Singapore, set up with the
8 NTU ANNUAL REPORT 2015
