His Royal Highness The Prince Andrew, The Duke of York joined a signing ceremony today, Friday October 2^nd,  to make the start of a new neuroscience research partnership between Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and the UK’s University of Warwick.

The aim of the new partnership is to accelerate the development of neuroscience research at both universities, promote joint ventures and access to mutual resources, establish collaborative links to other neuroscience research programmes based at Biopolis, Singapore, and enhance opportunities to participate in and benefit from the expanding neuroscience research partnership in Singapore.

The Agreement was signed by NTU Provost, Professor Bertil Andersson, and the Registrar of the University of Warwick, Mr Jon Baldwin.

“This agreement underscores the commitment by NTU to work with Warwick to accelerate the development of neuroscience at both universities,” said Professor Andersson. “It will also form a key node for the development of complementary research, and help to establish an international presence in neuroscience for both universities.”

“Neuroscience presents us with some of science's most challenging problems, but it holds the promise of significant and crucial new understandings of the function of the brain,” said the University of Warwick’s Vice-Chancellor Prof Nigel Thrift. “Such difficult but crucial science thrives best when global partnerships of leading scientists take on those challenges. I am delighted that we have formed such a partnership between Warwick and NTU and I am confident that this partnership will produce significant advances in this field.”

The other guests present alongside his  Royal Highness Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, KG,  included the UK’s High Commissioner to Singapore, His Excellency Paul Madden; Prof Colin Blakemore, Chairman, Neuroscience Research Partnership, Biomedical Research Council, A*STAR; Ms Nicola Owen, Academic Registrar, University of Warwick; Prof Lam Khin Yong, Associate Provost (Graduate Education and Special Projects), NTU; Prof Mark Featherstone, Interim Dean, College of Science, NTU; and Mr Chan Kwong Lok, Chief Planning Officer/Registrar, NTU

Media Contacts:

Edgar Lee  Senior Assistant Director (Corporate Communications Office)
Nanyang Technological University
Tel: (+65) 6790 6052 Mobile: (+65) 8322 3973
Email: edgarlee@ntu.edu.sg

 
Peter Dunn, Press and Media Relations Manager,
Communications Office, University House
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 8UW
+44 (0)24 76 523708 mobile/cell +44 (0)7767 655860
email: p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk

About Nanyang Technological University  

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a research-intensive university ranked among the world’s top 100 universities. The Yunnan Garden campus, NTU’s main campus, is located in the south-western part of Singapore and will be the Youth Olympic Village of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in 2010. The NTU@one-north campus, home to educational and alumni clubhouse facilities, is located near Singapore’s biomedical research hub Biopolis and the new engineering and physical sciences hub Fusionopolis.

 NTU has four colleges, namely:

 • The Nanyang Business School (the College of Business), the first and only Singapore business school to be ranked in the top 25 of the Financial Times Global MBA 2008 rankings,

• The College of Engineering, with six schools focused on technology and innovation and a research output among the top four in the world,

• The College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, home to Singapore's first professional art school offering degree courses in art, design and interactive digital media; the Humanities and Social Science School; and the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, a top journalism and media school in Asia,

• The College of Science is home to award-winning faculty, world-class laboratories, and Olympiad medal winners.

 The S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, one of three autonomous institutes of NTU, is a world authority on strategic studies and security research. NTU is also home to the internationally acclaimed National Institute of Education, Singapore’s only teacher-training institute. The Earth Observatory of Singapore, established in 2009 with $150 million in state funding, is dedicated to hazards-related earth science.

 As Singapore’s main science and technology university, NTU makes significant contributions to the nation's renewed drive for research and innovation spearheaded by the Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF). NTU’s strengths in biomedical sciences, environmental and water technologies, and interactive and digital media mirror the NRF’s research focus. Impressed by the vibrant entrepreneurship environment at NTU, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, widely known as ‘The Foundation of Entrepreneurship’, has chosen NTU to be the first Kauffman campus outside the United States of America.

NTU has a strong and broad international reach covering academic and research partnerships with top institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, such as MIT, Stanford University, Cornell University, Caltech, University of Washington, Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Cambridge University, Imperial College and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Peking University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Waseda University, and Indian Institute of Technology.

For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg

 About the University of Warwick

Among UK universities, Warwick is a unique, and uniquely successful, institution. It took its first students in 1965 and has become one of the UK’s leading universities, with an acknowledged reputation for excellence in research and teaching, innovation and links with business and industry. In the last UK Government Research Assessment Exercise, Warwick was rated seventh in the UK for research excellence. In the national UK media league tables, it has consistently ranked in the top 10 of the UK’s 120 plus universities.

For more information, visit www.warwick.ac.uk

PR112 PJD  2^nd October 2009