Warm greetings from the Office of Partnerships and Engagement (OPE)!

I am thrilled to share that Professor of Computer Science; Director, CARE.AI Lab; Coordinator, BSc (CS) Artificial Intelligence Track; Lee Kuan Yew Fellow Pradeep Varakantham, has been awarded the Ministry of Education (MOE) Decentralised Gap Funding (MDGF-POC) for developing Proof-of-Concept solutions to take the underlying research closer to market. Prof Varakantham joins a select list of previous awardees, including Professors Debin Gao, Rajesh Balan, Robert Deng, Hady Lauw and Alan Megargel, all of whom exemplify SMU’s aspiration to translate cutting-edge research into impactful solutions.

This MDGF grant award is a significant achievement and aligns closely with SMU’s digital transformation thrust. The MDGF is part of the National Research Foundation’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025) initiative and provides $2.5 million to support SMU’s commercialisation efforts over a five-year funding cycle from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2026. Managed by the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE), this new allocation is 5 times higher than the previous RIE2020 tranche, a demonstration of MOE’s continued confidence in the commercial potential of SMU’s research. This funding will allow SMU to further its commitment to research commercialisation and support our faculty members in developing innovative solutions with real-world applications and deliver meaningful impact. 

 
A Breakthrough in Automated Training: AACHARYA.AI

Prof Varakantham's project, AACHARYA.AI has been awarded the MDGF-POC grant. "Acharya," meaning "teacher" in the language Sanskrit, reflects the project's aim to revolutionise the automated training industry through the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Following an evaluation by Knowledge Transfer and Commercialisation (KTC) @ IIE and an industry panel, the project was awarded. 

AACHARYA.AI, built on its ADEPT framework (Anytime, aDaptive, automatEd, Personalised, privaTe), tackles the growing skills gap by providing personalised, adaptive, human-in-the-loop, and secure training solutions specifically designed for the corporate sector.

Awarding the MDGF-POC grant to Prof Varakantham exemplifies how principal investigators (PIs) and the KTC@IIE can collaborate to drive SMU's mission of “creating societal and economic impact through faculty-developed research”. Prof Varakantham's openness to early engagement with KTC, initiated after his research project was awarded in 2021, allowed KTC to foster a commercialisation mindset from the research phase itself. Further engagement with industry players, including those introduced by KTC, provided valuable insights which helped Prof Varakantham carefully consider the pressing needs of the automated education sector when deciding on the proposed solutions leveraging AI.

 We’re tremendously proud of Prof Varakantham’s expertise in AI and his dedication to transforming the automated training sector and look forward to seeing the impact that AACHARYA.AI will have. We take this opportunity to encourage faculty members to engage with KTC@IIE early in your research process to create similar opportunities. 

Please join me in congratulating Prof Varakantham, his team, and IIE on this remarkable achievement. 
 

Best wishes, 

Professor Lim Sun Sun
Vice President, Partnerships & Engagement
Lee Kong Chian Professor of Communication & Technology 
Singapore Management University

1 WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2023.pdf (weforum.org)
2 Corporate Training Market Growth Strategy, Trends And Forecast 2024-2033 (thebusinessresearchcompany.com)