The National University of Singapore (NUS) is launching a new research and innovation centre focused on applied artificial intelligence to strengthen talent development and accelerate domain-specific AI adoption in Singapore.
The initiative will support national priorities in digital transformation and advance AI capabilities in education, legal, and public health.
NUS is developing the joint centre in partnership with Google.
The centre will drive applied research across three main areas.
In education, NUS researchers will explore AI tools that support adult learning and workforce development.
These include course-specific AI companions, adaptive learning scaffolds, and psychometrically grounded measurement of learner engagement and skills progression.
In law, NUS will build a large language model (LLM) trained on Singapore legal data.
Developed in collaboration with NUS Law and the NUS AI Institute, the model aims to improve legal research and productivity by embedding statutory interpretation and local case precedents into AI systems.
In healthcare, the AI for public health (AI4PH) programme will integrate multimodal data from healthcare, social services, and environmental systems.
This supports population-level health interventions, with applications including preventive care under Healthier SG, cognitive wellness, and active ageing.
Rapid prototyping and deployment
The centre will operate a cloud-based sandbox environment for AI prototyping and testing before live deployment.
This setup enables researchers to trial solutions in a scalable, flexible framework optimised for data-heavy workloads.
NUS will also deepen AI talent pipelines by rolling out targeted training programmes and certifications in applied AI.
These will be made available to students and researchers across faculties.
Faculty development
Plans are underway to establish a new professorship in AI at NUS.
This will support long-term faculty development and research excellence in the field.
NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology), Professor Liu Bin, said, Google has been a long-term partner of NUS, and the institution is excited to deepen this strategic relationship.
The joint centre brings together NUS’s leadership in AI and multidisciplinary research and Google’s deep research expertise, advanced technologies and tools, and pathways for research translation and deployment, she added.
