THE fourth university here will be named the Singapore University of Technology and Design, or SU for short, and will take in the best and brightest students in the country and region when it opens in 2011.

It will start small, with a cohort of up to 500 undergraduates for the first three years, but this will gradually be increased until it reaches 4,000 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students.

SU's president will be the former engineering dean at the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Professor Thomas Magnanti, 64.

Prof Magnanti is familiar with Singapore, having taught with the Singapore-MIT Alliance in the late 1990s. He was also the director of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Smart) Centre.

He will head SU for a three-year term, during which he will be on leave from MIT.

The university will offer four degree programmes: Architecture and sustainable design, engineering and product design, engineering systems and system design, and information engineering and design. (see below) All will be four-year courses.

As their tentative names imply, design will be a common element taught in all four courses.

Learning will be inter-disciplinary, collaborative and hands-on. Students will be grounded in maths and science, as well as social sciences and humanities, and will collaborate on projects with undergraduates taking the other courses.

Instead of attending large lectures with hundreds of other students, they will attend classes in small groups of 50 to allow for better interaction.

To aid in inter-disciplinary teaching and research, the university will not be divided into traditional faculties.

Instead, teaching staff and students may be grouped into clusters according to technology and type of science.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Prof Magnanti said the search for faculty would begin next month.

He plans to recruit 50 faculty members, both local and international, by the time the university opens at an undisclosed interim campus in 2011. It will move to its permanent home in Upper Changi by 2015.

SU will also have a Chinese university as a second partner - the first being MIT - to be announced by the end of the year.

Explaining the university's focus, Prof Magnanti said: 'Technology is an important driver for any economy, particularly a modern economy, and so is design, which permeates our world.

'If we can create graduates who will go out to that world and be leaders, if we can create curriculum and research which can enhance design and technology capabilities within Singapore, we believe it will add enormously to the Singapore economy and also to the social environment within Singapore.'

He added that SU will teach the 'full spectrum of design', from conceptualisation to implementation and manufacturing, and not just the expression of an idea.

Said Mr Ong Peng Tsin - one of 17 members of SU's board of trustees introduced to the press yesterday - on the importance of design in technology: 'If you take a look at your favourite gadget, it is actually the design which enables you to appreciate it and helps a lot of people to adopt the technology. That is how SU is going to be different from other engineering colleges.'

Mr Ong is the chairman of multi-million-dollar venture fund Infocomm Investments.

SU's board will be headed by Mr Philip Ng, the chief executive of property development and investment group Far East Organization.

Members of the board come from various fields, including law, banking, accountancy and journalism. Local business has a representative in Mr Sam Goi, executive chairman of food and beverage group Tee Yih Jia Food Manufacturing.

Speaking about the choice of Prof Magnanti to head SU yesterday, Mr Ng said: 'In our discussions with MIT, one of the prospective partners, Prof Magnanti's name was put up and that excited us a lot. Tom is a very well known personality in Singapore...We felt that he had the credentials and certainly the passion and the understanding of what we wanted to achieve.'