Dear SMU Community,  
 

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

I am delighted to announce that Professor Lau Hoong Chuin and his team have scored a significant milestone in commercialising the research they have done in revolutionising workforce management.  
 

Their AI-powered platform, GENESIS, has been awarded the Ministry of Education (MOE) Decentralised Gap Funding (MDGF) to develop Proof-of-Concept (POC) solutions.   
 

GENESIS has already been road-tested at Tan Tong Seng Hospital (TTSH), and was featured in The Straits Times as a “breakthrough solution” which automated rostering to give nurses flexi-work options, thereby boosting the profession’s attractiveness. Previously, such rostering was done manually.  

The TTSH project was funded by AI Singapore under its 100 Experiments (100E) scheme, and the solution was developed by Prof Lau and his team working with a local HR solutions company. The MDFG award marks a significant achievement for SMU as it presents the team with more opportunities to finetune their solution and take their invention to market.  
 

The MDGF is part of the National Research Foundation’s Research, Innovation, and Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025)initiative. It provides $2.5 million to support SMU’s commercialisation efforts over a five-year funding cycle (1 April 2021 to 31 March 2026). 

Managed by the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE), this funding represents a fivefold increase from the previous RIE2020 tranche, reflecting MOE’s confidence in the commercial potential of SMU’s research. 

I would like to commend the Knowledge Transfer and Commercialisation (KTC) team at IIE for closely guiding and supporting Prof Lau and his team to secure this significant funding. It goes a long way towards empowering our faculty members to transform research ideas into real-world solutions.  
 

Please join me in congratulating Professor Lau and his team on this remarkable milestone. Faculty members interested in learning more about the MDGF or support available for your projects, do reach out to Dr Sze Tiam Lin, Jay Chandran, or Vincent Tam from KTC.  
 

Together, let’s continue to champion impactful research and innovation at SMU.  
 

Yours sincerely, 


Professor Lim Sun Sun


Vice President, Partnerships & Engagement


Singapore Management University