A new $150M Research Center of Excellence (RCE) on Mechanobiology has been set up at the National University of Singapore (http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/headlines/0209/TRCE_20Feb09.php).
Led by Director-designate Prof Michael Sheetz from the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University and co-Director-designate Prof Paul Matsudaira, Head of the NUS Department of Biological Sciences, the centre will have three integrated inter-disciplinary teams working on cellular, molecular and tissue mechanics. The researchers will endeavour to develop powerful quantitative physical and biochemical models to define dynamic cellular functions, experimental reagents and tools for studying diseases of cells and tissues. The competitive advantage of this Centre lies in its unique approach in characterising biomechanics at the molecule-to-cell-to-tissue levels through integrated inter-disciplinary teams and will enable Singapore to become one of the leaders in this field.
"Leveraging on our existing strengths in Biology, Bioengineering, Nanotechnology and Computational Biology, the Mechanobiology RCE will assemble a world-class team of international and local faculty to conduct high quality research," said NUS President Prof Tan Chorh Chuan. "We can look forward to breakthroughs that will have a significant impact on new drug discovery and therapeutics."
The RCE expects to have an initial 60 researchers and 180 researchers by 2011. It also plans to train 100 PhD students and 100 postdoctoral fellows over the next 10 years. For further information on the Center and post-doctoral positions, please visit our website at http://www.dbs.nus.edu.sg/mechano/index.html.