The School of Information Systems (SIS) at Singapore Management University (SMU) received three major grants to undertake Research, Development, and Deployment (RD &D) projects in support of Singapore’s national initiatives related to ageing in place, improving people and goods flow, reducing congestion in urban settings, and improving the security and trust of cyberspace. The total investment for these three projects comes to S$36.5 million, with funding from a combination of Singapore government research support schemes as well as private sector sources.

Professor Steven Miller, Vice Provost (Research) and Dean of SIS, said “We are delighted to have secured these three new research grants to support Singapore’s national needs as well as regional and global urban needs. To reach final agreement on S$36.5 million of R&D funding for a set of projects that are all highly integrated with Singapore’s national R&D needs was fantastic news for SMU.  

“This is a powerful testament to the fact that SMU is coming of age in terms of the ability to do larger scale R&D projects, and is increasingly being recognised as an important contributor to Singapore’s national R&D ecosystem. It is also a strong signal that SMU’s School of Information Systems, which is responsible for all three of these projects, has steadily and surely evolved into a major league player on the national and international R&D scene in our areas of concentration.”

Sensor-enabled homes and personalised care for senior Singaporeans

The SMU-TCS iCity Lab (iCity Lab), an SMU and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) joint venture focused on research and development of intelligent city solutions, has secured a research grant from the Ministry of National Development and National Research Foundation in September 2014 to develop technology solutions specifically tailored to the needs of senior citizens in Singapore.

Called The SHINESeniors (Smart Homes and Intelligent Neighbours to Enable Seniors) Project, it is an iCity Lab-initiated effort to make community care services effective through innovations in care delivery by leveraging Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Sensor-enabled homes will be developed in support of ageing-in-place for senior citizens living in Singapore. Through SHINESeniors, it is hoped that the cost of care delivery will be lowered significantly given the lower reliance on manpower. SMU-TCS iCity Lab will be working with multiple stakeholders, including several government agencies and community partners, to implement the project over three years.

Mr Alfred Wu, Senior Director at SMU-TCS iCity Lab, is the Lead Investigator of the SHINESeniors Project.

The iCity Lab will be working with SMU’s well-known Living Analytics Research Centre (LARC) for data analytics support. In addition, SMU’s School of Social Sciences will contribute to the SHINESeniors project by working on a related longitudinal survey, and by contributing to the analysis of collected data from social science perspectives.

As the core technology collaborator in the SHINESeniors Project, TCS’s contribution will include building a home-care platform with emphasis on the analytics module. It is a software solution that has sense-making algorithms for detecting and understanding elderly mobility patterns, which can then be used for remote monitoring and analysis by doctors and community caregivers. The TCS home-care platform will have the ability to personalise the appropriate community care plan, plan for social service support needs, and situation-specific community-care response protocols for each individual elderly person. Furthermore, the platform will integrate information about related support services for the elderly provided by various other social service and health care groups in order for all of those using the platform - both elderly “clients” and care providers - to have a more holistic and integrated ability to care for the elderly who are ageing in place in their homes and communities.

The iCity Lab was established in August 2011 within the SMU School of Information Systems as a three-year research collaboration whereby SMU and TCS would work together on research related to intelligent cities. Over the last three years, the Lab has achieved its major research objectives and accomplished several flag-ship projects across the intelligent city domain, including a deep focus on ageing and chronic disease management, as well as personalised community healthcare services. Therefore, SMU and TCS have agreed to continue the partnership for another three years.

Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence

[Photo: (L-R) Mr Suresh Sachi, Deputy Managing Director of A*STAR,  Mr Lim Chuan Poh, Chairman of A*STAR, Mr Tango Matsumoto, Corporate Executive Officer, EVP, and Head of Global Marketing of Fujitsu Limited, and Prof Arnoud De Meyer, President of SMU at the signing ceremony.] (Photo: A*STAR)

SMU together with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and Fujitsu Limited, signed a Master Research Collaboration Agreement on 15 October to establish a S$54 million Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence in Singapore to develop solutions that address urban challenges related to Dynamic Mobility Management, Maritime and Port Optimisation, and other selected areas. This Centre of Excellence is funded by Fujitsu Limited, A*STAR, and SMU, and also by Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), through its Corporate Lab @ University scheme. Administratively, the master research agreement establishes a three-way A*STAR- Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence. At the same time, within this umbrella Centre of Excellence framework, there is also a Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab @ SMU which is supported by NRF, Fujitsu and SMU.

School of Information Systems (SIS) Professor Lau Hoong Chuin serves as the overall Director of the Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab@SMU. The Deputy Director for Industry Practice and Lab Operations is Ms Wong Oi Mei, an experienced IT professional who had previously served as Vice President of Information Technology for Comfort Delgro Group. The Deputy Director for Research is SIS Associate Professor Cheng Shih Fen. The trio lead the effort to make sure the work of the Fujitsu-SMU Corporate Lab is fully integrated and aligned with the larger A*STAR-Fujitsu-SMU Centre of Excellence.

Under this five-year partnership, A*STAR, Fujitsu and SMU researchers at the Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence will use Singapore as a “living lab” to test-bed next generation solutions to real urban issues. The Centre will draw upon a diverse, yet complementary set of core strengths and technologies across the three organisations for solutions to urban challenges.

SMU will contribute our expertise in methods and software systems for planning, scheduling and decision making that combine artificial intelligence agent-based modelling and simulation, large-scale optimisation, mechanism design, behavioural economics and computational social science. SMU will also contribute our experience in doing R&D in real-world test-bed settings in Singapore.

The work occurring onsite at the Fujitsu-SMU Corporate Lab @SMU will include  SMU Masters and PhD students, and even some undergraduate students. This combined effort of the A*STAR-Fujitsu-SMU Centre of Excellence and the NRF-supported Corporate Lab @SMU opens up a new world of opportunities for SMU students, staff and faculty to work on urban management R&D efforts at scale, in real-world test-bed settings. This Urban Computing and Engineering effort also enables the SMU community to work more closely with A*STAR, as well as with both the R&D group and business groups of Fujitsu Limited to collaborate on creating innovative solutions to urban challenges.

Secure Mobile Centre

The third major SMU R&D project announced on 15 October 2014 is the Secure Mobile Centre, a new R&D centre focusing on improving the security of mobile computing applications, mobile computing platforms, and end-to-end mobile services delivery. This is a four-year R&D effort under NRF’s National Cybersecurity R&D Programme, and funded by NRF and other collaborating Singapore government agencies. The press announcement on Singapore’s National Cybersecurity R&D Programme released on 15 October by NRF and five other collaborating Singapore government agencies noted that a total of S$42 million of R&D funds were awarded across seven projects, including the SMU project. 

The Secure Mobile Centre is led by a team of five SIS faculty members who specialise in information security and trust: Professor Robert Deng (Centre Director), Professor Pang Hwee Hwa, Associate Professor Li Yingjiu, Associate Professor Ding Xuhua, and Assistant Professor Debin Gao. They will conduct R&D projects that target three key aspects of mobile computing – 1) mobility, 2) connectivity, and 3) extensibility. Primary research areas include: fortifying mobile platforms with a user-centric trust anchor; analysing, detecting, containing mobile malware; systems for scalable access control of encrypted data in untrusted servers; and secure and usable authentication systems in mobile computing.

SMU’s Secure Mobile Centre is partnering with ST Electronics (Info-Security) Pte Ltd, Gemalto Pte Ltd, StarHub, and McAfee Singapore which is part of Intel Security, to conduct trials of the R&D projects in secure mobile computing. The Centre is also collaborating with Singapore government agencies, including the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA), the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to bridge research outcomes with practical needs. In addition, SMU will work with international organisations such as INTERPOL to jointly develop knowledge and expertise in secure mobile computing.

SMU SIS has a Growing Role in R&D Testbedding,  Analytics for  Urban Solutions, Computational Social Sciences, and Secure Cyberspace for a Mobile-Centric World

Professor Steven Miller, SMU Vice Provost (Research) and Dean, SIS, noted:

“There are important common elements across all three of these projects. These are

1. A mandate for the R&D to extend beyond the boundaries of the university, and to be demonstrated and validated through deployment in real-world urban testbeds. This is why we refer to them as RD&D projects, Research, Development and (Testbed) Deployment.
2. All of these projects are done within a complex ecosystem of private sector and public sector partners. This adds richness, realism and relevance. At the same time, this also adds complexity, and requires sophisticated project management and stakeholder relationship management. The ability to execute these types of multi-party RD&D projects is an important competency that SMU is developing across the university. SMU’s School of Information Systems is noted for making especially significant efforts within SMU to take on the challenge of working out how to combine the academic research skills with the practical project management and execution skills do to this type of RD&D work.
3.  All of these projects require the deep integration of research capabilities related to infocomm technology and computing, with research capabilities related to understanding and supporting the behavior of people in various social and organizational settings. Important aspects of Computational Science have to be brought together with important aspects of Management and Social Science.  This set of projects contributes to SMU’s ongoing effort to establish itself as a leader in important aspects of the emerging area of Computational Social Science.
4. All of these projects require that confidential data be collected, protected and kept secure, and that issues associated with data privacy be deeply understood and appropriately addressed. This set of  projects will further strengthen SMU’s experience and competencies related to doing highly integrated work across the areas of analytics, urban solutions, and cybersecurity in ways that ensure that confidential private sector, public sector and individual social  and consumer behaviour data is adequately protected, and that data privacy is fully appreciated and highly respected.
5. This set of projects will significantly contribute to capability building in several of SMU’s designated university-wide Areas of Excellence. The SMU Areas of Excellence that are directly related to one or more of these new projects are i) Urban Management & Sustainability, ii) Economics of Healthcare & Healthcare Management, and iii) Analytics for Business, Consumer & Social Insights.

We are glad to take on the significant intellectual and practical challenges associated with undertaking and completing these three projects. By taking on these challenges, we will be able to help Singapore and the region, and in doing so, we will have relevant and important ways to contribute to our academic foundations and to our international academic communities as well.”

[Featured photo: Professor Steven Miller, Vice Provost (Research) and Dean of SMU School of Information Systems, and Professor Lau Hoong Chuin, Director of Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Corporate Lab@SMU, at the press conference announcing the launch of A*STAR-Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing and Engineering Centre of Excellence on 15 October 2014.] (Photo: Fujitsu)