TED-style Biopolis, September 11, 2010

With its pure intent to have a TED-style event at Biopolis, the A*STAR Post Doctoral Society got together and organised a fairly good event. The crowd that turned up showed the buzz it created during its lead up. Here, we highlight some of the talks and ideas shared during TEDstyleBiopolis

 

Before the speakers took glamorous stage, the introduction talk challenged the attendees to either agree or advocate with the talks presented during the session. This set the stage for a comprehendible, sharing session by the various speakers.

 

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1. Professor Kishore Mahbubani

 

As a diplomat, Professor Kishore's understanding and presentation of the macro-economics of things was clearly evident. He began his talk by asking a fundamental question. "Is humanity becoming more intelligent or stupid?"

 

He continued by stating the below discussion points:

 

• The world is now more peaceful as there are less inter-state wars. Global poverty is diminishing. The only MDG that will be met is halving poverty by 2015 and this is all thanks to the dynamics growth of Asia. The world is shrinking; this makes us a global community.

 

• But even though we are a global community, we fail to think as one, or as I would rephrase it as not able to think collectively.

 

Professor Kishore opined that the global village councils were robbed by the richest, smartest and most powerful states in the world, especially Western countries.

 

His talk ended with philosophical quotes and thought-provoking questions. Do we want to acknowledge that the the western domination is over? How do we address the continued trampling on the interest of the Islamic world by the west? Are the Asian states ready to take more responsibility in world management? Is the west ready to share power?

 

 

2. Dr. Oliver Dressen

Dr. Oliver shared about his post-doctoral work on African sleeping sickness and the role of their chromosomes.

 

African Sleeping Sickness is caused by a parasite called Trypanosoma brucei and is transmitted by the Tsetse fly. The parasite will switch its antigenic surface coating that allows it to elude the human surveillance system. As the human body's immune system tries to keep up with the parasite’s antigenic switching mechanism, the body goes into ‘a sleepy state’.

 

Dr. Oliver then described the role which telomeres played in this antigenic switching.

 

 

Perhaps, other than the scientific interest, we hope that Dr. Oliver can emphasise on how his research changes the way we think or do things differently.

 

 

3. Mr. Jack Sim

 

As the founder of the World Toilet Organisation, Jack shared about his work and passion in providing sanitation solution to the world's biggest problem where interventions could make a major difference in human living.

 

Through his own startup journey, Jack learnt that partnering with the right people helped him gain traction for his organisation. He even described how he leverages the (impact of) media to help spread the message of sanitation. He gave humor-oriented presentation, and delivered his speech with serious and earnest tone.  

 

Jack highlighted that although many people saw sanitation as a waste of effort; this itself can be angled as a business opportunity (positive spin).

 

We note that this social-cum-enterprise model is the basis of most social entrepreneurships with the potential consumers (from third-world countries) lying at the base of the pyramid.

 

Jack's talk certainly resounded well with the crowd, even though some of them have already heard him talk in other events.

 

 

4. Dr. Isabelle Desjeux

 

Failomics is a methodology used to predict the future.

 

At the back of my mind – I was pondering on the fact that failure might result in no future (typical “Singaporean mentality”).

 

Dr. Isabelle’s failomics idea was a bit hard to grasp. Gradually, she started showing how she classified failures, the blindness of culture towards failure and the forgotten scientist. I think she must have stumbled upon a knowledge here – she unfolded the fractals and hierarchy of failures.

 

It was not easy to follow her train of thoughts. With the failomics idea behind her, a refinement would really help propel her idea into limelight which can help Singaporeans to accept failures as part of the thought-process.

 

 

5. Professor Tay Kheng Soon

 

Professor Tay addressed the issue from the urban planning and architectural point of view.

 

His concept of rubanisation involves a mix of the natural and man-made environments. He showed us the places which his concepts have been tested, places in Indonesia.

 

The concept of mixing man-made with natural belts seem very familiar to what Singapore has built, but in a smaller scale. His talk led me to think about self-sustaining communities which will help us understand how we can live in more desolate places like Mars.

 

In fact, he turns the idea into a story – slums are a failure of the city into slums is actually symptoms of a failing countryside.

 

Through rubanisation, technologies can be implemented to help in building these communities. He hopes to influence rubanisation through education and empowerment adopted by the younger generations. Kids are empowered in their learning process to re-designing their towns in ways which adults could not imagine … Perhaps, solving problems of the world from ground up is the way to go!

 

 

6. Dr. Federic Bard

 

DNA is meant to be read (not by humans), but by molecular machinery.

 

So how is it possible for us to make sense of the billions of codes in our DNA? Fedreric proposed an idea for a rosetta stone for reading our own DNA profile. This would help open up personalised medicine which tackles cellular-based diseases. Beyond this, I was unable again to capture his point and thrust of his idea, even with my scientific training. Again, I felt that Federic was on to something, yet unable to articulate in a TED-style talk.

 

 

7. Dr. Dale Purves

 

Ever wonder how it is your brain adds things up?

 

As a neuroscientist, Dave shared the neurology of how we see things. Dave showed several great visual tricks which certainly fooled me. The work which Dave does helped me to think about the way we perceive things. Even as a neuroscientist, he admits that not everything adds up in brain science. His talks on visual percepts reminded me of some points made by the author, John Medina in his book, The Brain Rules.

 

 

8. Dr. Michael Tay

 

Michael Tay shared what forensic science really is – it is where science and justice meets on the judicial system.

 

Thanks to Crime Scene Investigation (CSI), it has muddled up real science and technology behind forensics and exaggerated of the speed of information. These forensics scientists would complete their PCR in mere minutes!

 

Michael also covered some myths of forensic science. I wish he could stop there because he started sharing real life cases and the crime-scenes (pictures) did not lie. There were cases of murder, suicide (and mangoes). In most of the cases presented, this was an uncommonly “appetising” way of ending the TED-style event.

 

This blog article is contributed by Dr. Erwin Chan. Erwin is now working in Singapore Management University (SMU). He overlooks the intellectual property portfolio creation and innovation development.

One of the most experimental, community driven initiatives of the year, DIYBio was the brainchild of Denisa K, a NUS professor of arts and social science. I met her and was also glad to know her ideas were similar to mine. Even some of her observations of the scientific community in Singapore were spot on to that of my own.

 

ASEAN Science Enterprise Challenge (ASEC)

ASEC challenge was issued by a scientist from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where participants had 24 hours to develop a business idea to tackle the issue. Local youths competed with each other in parallel with other ASEAN countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. ASEC 2010 was held from 29-30 May 2010 at Singapore Management University, Li Ka Shing Library. Past years’ challenge saw participation from more than 20 teams, comprising of students from various Junior Colleges, ITE Colleges, Polytechnics and International High Schools.

Global Enterprise Challenge (GEC)

GEC, formerly known as the Enterprise Olympics, is a 24 hour enterprise challenge for young people aged 16-19. Career Scotland, which is a national organization to deliver career guidance and employability services in Scotland, developed the GEC in 2001. The purpose of the event is to give young people the opportunity to develop their knowledge and experience of enterprise, through providing an environment where they can apply skills and develop their understanding in practical ways.

Competing student teams from around the world are set a challenge to produce a prototype and a business plan for a commercially viable product or service to meet an objective set by NASA and Careers Scotland. Usually, this will be technology-based and related to a social or environments objective.

GEC 2010 will be hosted in Bali, Indonesia, from 14 – 15 June 2010.

 

 

About ASEC-GEC

ASEC-GEC meets government enterprise goals and is a fit with its science innovation and enterprise (I&E) education policy. This particular enterprise model provides for applied scientific creative thinking. It can be a precursor or introduction to further developments in the innovative application of science and enterprise education.

For more information and registration details, please visit www.gec-singapore.com