Singapore’s Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE)was established in 2007, with funding from Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), to allow research-intensive institutions from all over the world to set up research centres in Singapore. CREATE supports collaborations between four Singaporean universities and seven international partners, including the University of Cambridge.
To mark its 10th anniversary, CREATE held an international symposium attended by university leaders as well as Singapore's former president, Dr Tony Tan. Speaking at the event on 1 December, Mr Heng Swee Keat, Singapore’s Minister for Finance and Deputy Chairman of the NRF said: “CREATE is an international research hub, built on strong institutional partnerships, involving almost 1,100 people from over 40 countries. CREATE’s projects are relevant to Singapore and impactful on the global level.”
The Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the University of Cambridge, was set up as one of CREATE’s collaborative initiatives in April 2013. Its first research programme was the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Reduction in Chemical Technology (C4T), which tackles the problem of assessing and reducing the carbon footprint of the petrochemical plants and electrical network on Singapore’s Jurong Island.
Prof Markus Kraft (CARES' Director) commented: “We have identified opportunities to save over 8 million tonnes of CO₂ per year for Singapore – this is about 20% of their annual emissions. The idea of C4T Phase 2 is to take this forward. At the core of the proposal for C4T Phase Two is to look at ideas generated in Phase One, take them much closer to the market and let them be adopted by industry.”