The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Google are embarking on a new strategic collaboration to accelerate applied AI research and nurture skilled AI practitioners.
This collaboration reinforces Singapore’s ambition to be a global hub for AI innovation and talent, advances the national digital transformation agenda, and deepens industry-academia partnerships to strengthen the country’s research ecosystem.
“The joint centre brings together NUS’s leadership in AI and multidisciplinary research and Google’s deep research expertise, advanced technologies and tools, as well as well-established pathways for research translation and deployment,” said Liu Bin, NUS Deputy President (Research and Technology).
Liu said a key pillar of this partnership is talent development — through endowed professorships, mentorship, training programmes, and hands-on research projects.
“We are confident that our joint efforts with Google will nurture the next generation of AI scientists, engineers, and innovators equipped to tackle real-world challenges,” added Liu.
Serene Sia, Google Cloud country director in Singapore and Malaysia, said Google and NUS share a longstanding partnership, anchored on talent development and applying frontier technologies for public good.
These include an on-campus Google Developer Group to equip students with advanced software skills; Google Cloud as a pioneering industry partner of the NUS AI Institute; cultivating talent to tackle biomedical challenges with AI; producing the world’s first AI-powered legal journal podcast with NotebookLM, and a Google PhD Fellowship programme to recognise exceptional work in computer science.
“Our new collaboration [is] a significant step forward in Google’s commitment to bringing new capabilities for scientific discovery to Singapore,” said Sia.
NUS and Google plan to establish a joint research and innovation centre, bringing together resources and technology to pursue experimental or applied AI projects across diverse domains.
There are also plans for a rapid prototyping sandbox to be established and governed by the joint centre to provide a controlled and flexible cloud-based environment, supported by Google Cloud’s power-efficient Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), for experimentation, testing, and validation of the solutions developed under each of the domains, before they are deployed or scaled in real-world settings.
An example of these domains is AI in Education. This involves Research aimed at utilising Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to develop and evaluate AI-driven tools for adult education. This supports the national emphasis on lifelong learning and continuous upskilling of Singaporeans for the evolving demands of various industries.
Another is AI in Legal, the development of a Singapore Law-specific LLM on Google Cloud by NUS Faculty of Law, NUS AI Institute, and NUS Computing. This project aims to provide the core technology for an AI assistant supporting legal research, with potential to enhance productivity and access to contextually-relevant legal information across law firms, the judiciary, and public legal education.
Still another is AI in Public Health (AI4PH). This refers to Research that aims to utilise AI to drive population-level health outcomes, by integrating foundational models with diverse data sources across healthcare, social services, and environmental systems. This will enable the development of agentic AI solutions to support preventive care under programmes like Healthier SG and promote cognitive health and active ageing.
Complementing the joint centre, Google plans to establish an AI-focused talent development programme at NUS. This initiative aims to provide training opportunities and certification pathways in Google Cloud AI platforms and tools for NUS students and researchers to accelerate their applied AI research projects.
Additionally, Google intends to establish a Google-supported professorship at NUS to further promote faculty leadership in AI-related fields, foster even deeper collaboration between academia and industry, and contribute to cultivating the next generation of talent in AI and digital innovation.
