Singapore believes it has seen the future, and its name is the Biopolis. The sparkling new US$300 million suburban complex of angular buildings, erected on hilly ground next to the Ministry of Education, is the nerve centre of the city-state’s campaign to become a global science hub. Scientists from Europe, North America and Asia are now relocating to the Biopolis, thanks to attractive salaries, an expatriate-friendly environment and relatively liberal rules on cutting-edge fields like stem cell research. At the same time, more than 500 of Singapore’s brightest students are now being sent to top foreign universities to earn PhDs and lead Singapore’s charge into the brave new world of biomedical industries in the 21st century. With assembly-line manufacturing under long-term threat from lower-cost countries, Singapore is banking on science as a new economic growth engine. It hopes a thriving research sector will produce a long-term windfall from patented discoveries and steadily reduce Singapore’s heavy dependence on the cyclical and increasingly crowded electronics sector.
