Singapore believes it has seen the future, and its name is the Biopolis. The sparkling new 300-million-US-dollar suburban complex of angular buildings, erected on hilly ground next to the Ministry of Education, is the nerve center 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.
"Never fall in love with an industry," said Philip Yeo, the co-chairman of the Economic Development Board (EDB), the investment promotion agency that was instrumental in Singapore's rise as a top electronics production center.
Now, as concurrent head of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Yeo is nudging Singapore toward "knowledge economy" industries centered at the Biopolis, where brains, investment and public funding are all in one place.
"The day we relax, we're a goner," Yeo told AFP.
The scholars are literally being turned into poster boys and girls of the agency to convince students to take up science as a profession.
"In Singapore we don't glorify footballers," said Yeo.
It will cost up to 600,000 US dollars to finance the education of each student from a basic university degree to a full-blown PhD, eight years of study which the scholar must repay with six years of service to the government.
About 15 percent of the scholars are naturalised Singaporeans.
One of them is Chinese-born Liang Jing, 24, who is pursuing a degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan. He is the only child of an engineer and his wife who migrated to Singapore when he was 11.
"I do not come from a wealthy family. Without this scholarship, I would probably do a local engineering degree instead," he told AFP by email.
Liang said he wants to someday head "a self-sustaining research institute in Singapore that does not depend on government funding once established."
Yeo says the country wants "hungry kids from the region" to help power its scientific ambitions.
"Intelligence is not enough. You need hunger."
Science scholars are in Yeo's words "more expensive than an infantry battalion" but Singapore can well afford it - it has close to 120 billion US dollars in foreign reserves.
The first of the newly-minted PhDs will return in 2008-2009 to jobs with starting salaries of more than 40,000 US dollars a year, and stand to earn much more in the private sector after they complete their government study bonds.
It's already well-known in the scientific world that Singapore is out to lure some of the best names in basic research.
One of those who have moved here is Alan Coleman, the British scientist who in 1996 delivered Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned mammal.
When the Biopolis is fully occupied, it can host about 2,000 scientists engaged in stem cell, cancer and other forms of fundamental research aimed at finding cures for some of the oldest and most debilitating diseases.
In buildings named Matrix, Centros, Nanos, Genome, Helios, Chromos and Proteos interlinked by pedestrian skyways, scientists in laboratory coats and jeans work in meticulously planned surroundings at the Biopolis.
The buildings are clustered around a courtyard with restaurants, a wine bar, a convenience store and a hair salon. There's a laundry that also sells laboratory coats.
Old trees have been planted in the middle of the courtyard, with artificial waterfalls and a carp pond giving the Biopolis a park-like atmosphere.
A prison next door where some shirtless inmates can still be seen from the laboratories will give way to the further expansion of the Biopolis, which will also have its own business hotel, condominium and gourmet restaurants.
"The key is to bring in critical mass, co-locate," Yeo said.
The Singapore government itself has an investment arm called BioOne Capital Pte. Ltd, which manages more than 700 million US dollars in funds invested in biomedical business ventures worldwide including some in Biopolis itself.
One of the foreign companies now operating there is British firm Paradigm Therapeutics, which specialises in early-stage drug discovery particularly for the central nervous system, metabolic diseases and pain.
It now employs nine scientists at Biopolis and plans to double its staff over the next year.
Ian Gray, its director of research, said Singapore's stable infrastructure, English-speaking environment and strong skills base in molecular biology and cell culture were strong attractions for his firm.
"We have samples that are stored at minus 80 degrees. We can't afford for the power to go down for any length of time," he told AFP.
A high-level panel has recommended the doubling of Singapore's research and development spending to more than seven billion US dollars over the next five years, which means more scholarships for Singaporeans, native or naturalised.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, a British-educated mathematician, announced over the weekend that he will chair a new Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council that will oversee the ambitious drive to make money out of science.
"There are risks in this approach, but we have to do this," Lee said. "If we succeed, we will gain competitive advantage that puts us ahead for 15 to 20 years."
Partly Facetious: what can Bush do about followers like Robertson
ZOHRA IBRAHIM
ARTICLE: "So if you call for someone to be assassinated then you are what?"
"A fundamentalist at the least, a terrorist by most other accounts. According to a new British law he could be deported back to wherever he came from. This is tantamount to preaching hate and even Musharraf has put several hundred behind bars for preaching hate."
"Ah, my friend. You are like our evangelical friend in the US, George Bush and his Poodle, Blair. Why are you assuming that I was referring to a Muslim cleric?"
"Well, aren't you?"
"There are fundamentalists in all religions and let's be honest religious wars haven't quite died with the Middle Ages, if you know what I mean."
"Well, Islamic fundamentalists have..."
"Read my lips. I was not referring to an Islamic fundamentalist here."
"OK, so tell your story."
"There is a guy called Robertson, a religious broadcaster in the US, probably working in America's Christian heartland. Anyway, he called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President. If you recall Hugo Chavez had accused the US some years back of supporting a coup in his country, unsuccessfully as it turned out - a charge that could not be denied."
"The US can't deport Robertson. Unless they find out his ancestors were from some European country..."
"I doubt if any European country would take him."
"So what is happening?"
"The White House said the statement was irresponsible."
"Not the statement of a fundamentalist preaching hate and calling for murder?"
"No And Robertson has since apologised."
"Don't you think they should make him pay a little bit for airing such views. I mean true you don't have a Fatwa in Christianity or even Jihad but Robertson was pretty close to supporting those two Muslim activities."
"Indeed it is but what can you do if the guy is a fundamentalist and people like him were behind Bush's victory."
"I suppose."
"All about politics, isn't it!"
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