SMART@SGInnovate Office

n tandem with the Singapore’s government launch of SGInnovate -- the new agency that connects entrepreneurs with industry mentors, venture capitalists and research talent -- Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) has launched its new SMART@SGInnovate Office.

Housed within the SGInnovate office, SMART’s new office is a physical extension of the SMART Innovation Center — an entity under the ambit of SMART that models the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT. The SMART Innovation Center aims to nurture scientists and engineers so that their innovations can be accelerated to commercialisation. The SMART Innovation Center offers two sets of innovation grants in the areas of physical and biological-oriented science and engineering sometimes called the deep sciences. As a leading innovation center with almost a decade of experience in training startups, SMART’s flagship programs include:

(*) SMART Catalyst, a network of trained people who are catalysts with domain knowledge in the deep sciences to help drive projects to company formation and commercial impact;
(*) SMART Bootcamp, a three-week entrepreneurship bootcamp for recipients of the SMART Innovation Grant, which teaches the fundamentals of venture building in the deep sciences; and
(*) SMART Fellowship, a program aimed primarily at postdocs in the deep sciences to develop a talent group of chief technology officers and chief science officers for deep science-based startup companies.

The SMART Innovation Center is funded through SMART by the National Research Foundation Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program.

Officially launched by Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, SG-Innovate aims to take the Singapore startup ecosystem to the next level.