Diversifying Ruined

(SINGAPORE) Singapore's fourth publicly funded university has officially been named the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SU).

Prof Magnanti: Looking forward to helping SU become the top institution for technology and design in the world over the next 10 to 20 years

Also unveiled yesterday was its founding president, Thomas Magnanti, an institute professor and former dean of the engineering school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. He has been with the Boston-based institution for the past 37 years.

Prof Magnanti began work here at the start of October and will be on leave from MIT throughout his three-year appointment to devote his time fully to leading SU.

MIT is one of the new university's two foreign partners, and the Ministry of Education said yesterday that it expects to announce the other - a top Chinese university - by the end of the year.

The chairman of SU's new board of trustees, Philip Ng, told reporters that he was delighted to have Prof Magnanti at the helm as his knowledge and experience would be crucial in building a strong relationship between SU and MIT.

SU is on track to accept its first intake of 500 students in 2011, before eventually growing to reach an annual intake of about 2,500. It will operate from an as-yet-undisclosed temporary campus for about four years before moving to a permanent home on Upper Changi Road East, next to the Changi Business Park, by 2015.

Students will get to pick from four programmes leading to separate degrees. These are Architecture and Sustainable Design, Engineering Product Design, Engineering Systems and System Design, and Information Engineering and Design. All undergraduates will also have to take up a foundation programme in mathematics, sciences and the humanities in their freshmen year.

Said Mr Ng, who is also chief executive of Far East Organization: 'There is a lot of regional demand for the MIT links that we have, a modified type of MIT education, if you will. What we hope to do is to produce logically and technically trained leaders of the future.'

Prof Magnanti is no stranger to Singapore, having had a long association dating back to the mid-1980s. He was a contributing faculty member and then-member of the governing board of the Singapore-MIT Alliance, and later as the director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

Having travelled in and out of the Republic frequently over the last decade, Prof Magnanti said that he has a strong connection here and was looking forward to helping SU become the top institution for technology and design in the world over the next 10 to 20 years.

'The creation of SU is as exciting as it is ambitious,' said the American. 'Through its distinctive education and research and focus on technology-grounded leadership, it will be well-poised to serve Singapore, the region and the world.'

Prof Magnanti earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Syracuse University, and master's degrees in statistics and mathematics, as well as a PhD in operations research, all from Stamford University.