SINGAPORE'S universities have successfully boosted the amount of research being done here, according to international benchmarks.

One such measure is the number of postgraduate research students.

There are now 4,676 such students being funded by the Education Ministry's Academic Research Fund (AcRF) - a 13 per cent increase from 2006.

The number of projects funded has also gone up, from 30 in 2006 to today's 53.

Three Research Centres of Excellence, which will fund programmes that generate research of global impact, have also received the nod in the last two years.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have improved their performance on research indicators used by London's Times Higher Education Supplement.

Elaborating, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said: 'In terms of citations per faculty member, NUS has moved up in rank from the 115th to 122nd band in 2006, to the 61st to 67th band last year.

'NTU too has moved up about 40 places, and was among the 125th to 130th universities in 2007.'

Dr Ng was replying to a question by Mr Zainudin Nordin (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC), who asked for an update on Singapore's efforts to promote more research work in local universities.

The minister noted the Government's plan to increase its research and development expenditure from 2.25 per cent of its gross domestic product in 2004 to 3 per cent by 2010.

As part of this plan, the AcRF has grown in size to about $1.4 billion. That sum of money is for the five years starting in 2006, and three times higher than the sum allocated for the five years before 2006.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on September 17, 2008.

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