MOE Speech - SPEECH BY DR NG ENG HEN, ACTING MINISTER FOR MANPOWER & MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 2003 TAN KAH KEE YOUNG INVENTORS' AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONY

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SPEECH BY DR NG ENG HEN, ACTING MINISTER FOR MANPOWER & MINISTER OF STATE FOR EDUCATION, AT THE 2003 TAN KAH KEE YOUNG INVENTORS' AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONY ON SATURDAY, 28 JUNE 2003, AT 10.00 AM AT THE MAXWELL AUDITORIUM, SINGAPORE SCIENCE CENTRE

Prof Phua Kok Khoo, Chairman, Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award Committee,

Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

               Good morning. It is my pleasure to be here at the 2003 Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award Presentation Ceremony. This ceremony had to be postponed from its original date in April but I am glad to see that we are able to come together today, and that you all look bright and enthusiastic, undimmed by the crisis that Singapore has just gone through.

2.             We are here to recognise and celebrate the ingenuity and enterprise you have shown in developing your projects. From nine-year-olds to university professors, this Award certainly has no shortage of competitors and enjoys broad support from our education community. I understand that in the Student Section in particular, the organisers received 602 entries this year, up from 356 entries last year. This is a very encouraging sign indeed, and I hope that your participation in this competition has been a fruitful experience for you.

3.             It is timely that we reflect on Singapore's recent experience with SARS, and consider how the lessons we have gained from this experience can help us to be better inventors, better innovators, and ultimately better citizens in the century ahead.

Research & the Expansion of Knowledge

4.             Our recent brush with SARS - and even more recently, the unexpected outbreak of monkeypox in the United States - has reminded us yet again, that despite impressive technological progress, human beings remain vulnerable to microbes. Despite the unraveling of the genetic basis of life 50 years ago by Watson and Crick, much remains to be discovered. The origin and causation of many diseases including SARs, dengue fever, cancer to name but a few remain uncertain.

5.             We will need bright and creative minds to lead us into the fray, - just as you all have examined a particular problem for your projects and suggested a remedy for it. And just as today's awards recognise ingenuity and invention in a range of different fields, so, too, is the war against disease not confined to the fields of medicine or public health alone. It relies also on innovation and development in related and ancillary domains - such as information technology (IT), economics or social welfare - in order to reap the maximum benefit for all human beings.

6.             To position our students to contribute to these areas of research and development, we have made the learning of life sciences a priority in our school curriculum. All our students learn the fundamentals of the life sciences, which we hope will help them to develop a clearer and more responsible understanding of the physical world and our place in it. Thus, our students are primed to take advantage of opportunities in the biomedical industry if they wish to, whether or not they become doctors or healthcare experts.

7.             We certainly hope that some of you will reflect seriously on what Singapore has seen during the last few months with SARS, and consider the future directions in research and development that you would like to take up. Though your inventions and experimentation at this stage may be confined to more day-to-day situations, I understand from the organisers that with each passing year, the entries for this Award are becoming more sophisticated and tackling a much more diverse range of problems. In the same way, I hope that you will go on to challenge yourselves and dare to take on ever more complex issues, and apply the same ingenuity and energy to broaden the human fields of endeavour.

The Globalisation of Cooperation

8.             The other crucial lesson to draw from our experience with SARS is that there is, without a doubt, a global dimension to this war against disease. Some may argue that it is precisely because of the technological progress we have already achieved that SARS could spread so far, so fast - leaping across timezones before we realised what was upon us. Indeed, it has become commonplace to compare the rate of the spread of SARS with that of the Black Death, another virulent disease that originated in China and swept the world. The Black Death took more than a decade to make it to Europe from Asia; SARS took just a scant few months, as we have just witnessed.

9.             However, let us not forget that it is also the global and globalised dimension that has enabled us to overcome the worst of this disease. Today, we have the World Health Organization that can marshal global resources and bring together the combined expertise of doctors and governments from around the world. We have international networks of cooperation that share information openly and collaborate on ideas. For example, we had our very own doctors here, linked up with their counterparts in Hong Kong, Europe and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, all working around the clock to learn more about the disease.

10.           This is the exciting promise of research and development in the future. The word 'globalisation' invokes, for some, spectres of intensified competition between countries, of nations and cultures running roughshod over each other. But the flip side to that is the globalisation of cooperation. Individuals may have never seen each other before and may know only each other's names and e-mail addresses - but they can nonetheless work together in intimate collaborations that jumpstart each other's R&D processes, achieving more with a team in every timezone than could ever be dreamt of by a solitary inventor, tinkering alone in his workshop. As young people growing up in this tightly interconnected world, I hope that you will seize the prospects and opportunities that it offers, and make the most that you can of combined endeavour and scientific advancement.

11.           The Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award has taken a step towards 'globalising' the Award by going regional for the first time. I understand that Shanghai University organised the first round of the Award and that they received a hearty response of 57 inventions in this first year, mainly from students of various Shanghai universities. I look forward to seeing some of the winning entries at the exhibition later and I hope that this Award will provide a channel for young inventors in Singapore and Shanghai to interact and learn from one another, forging links for long-term collaboration.

Conclusion

12.           In closing, I would like to commend the Tan Kah Kee Foundation and its partners - A*STAR, the Singapore Science Centre and the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) - for their concerted and sustained efforts in organising this Award. You too have an important role in helping to encourage knowledge generation and application among the young. And finally, I would like to convey my heartiest congratulations to the winners of this year's Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Award. For the other participants, I hope that you will continue to find outlets such as these to exercise your creativity, and that you will go on to break new ground in the fields that you enjoy.

Thank you.