Personalised promotions are the bread and butter of a consumer initiative called LiveLab, the brainchild of professors at SMU. Combining personal data with location is key, said Dean of the SMU School of Information Systems and Vice Provost (Research) Steven Miller. "It is something they [consumers] will find helpful in that context. It's going from location-aware to context-aware. That's where a lot of the smarts are." For Prof Miller, the projects at SMU put the fledgling university in the big league. "We're not aware of anyone in the world that is doing things on this scale," he said. "We're building a larger ecosystem than anyone else." And he dismisses any concerns about data privacy. The data protection laws on the use of personal information are as strong in Singapore as they are in the US, he said.