SMU signed a Master Research Collaboration Agreement on Wednesday with A*Star and Fujitsu to invest a total of S$54 million in an Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence. The centre aims to develop solutions for sustainable urban operations and will focus on two projects addressing crowd management, and improving port operations by managing incoming and outgoing shipments. Under the deal, SMU will apply its expertise in behavioural economics and computational social science. The centre is supported by the Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab @ SMU and funded by the National Research Fund (NRF) as the fourth laboratory to be established under the NRF Corp Lab@University Scheme. The scheme supports Singapore's autonomous universities in their conduct of industry-relevant research with companies as partners.