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

I am delighted to announce that Professor Gary Pan and his team have scored a significant milestone in commercialising the research they have done in enhancing the evaluation and mentorship of startups through AI. 

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

The team behind PUFFER identified inefficiencies in how competitions, accelerators, and Venture Capital (VC) firms evaluate startups, with incumbent processes found to be predominantly manual, time-intensive and prone to inconsistencies. With PUFFER, stakeholders now are empowered with automated, data-driven insights to improve decision-making and operational efficiencies when assessing, managing and mentoring startups as they scale.

PUFFER’s real-world potential has been further validated through its selection in the Lee Kuan Yew Global Business Plan Competition (LKYGBPC), and its future roadmap includes leveraging its capabilities for other startup competitions. The MDGF award marks a significant achievement for SMU as it presents the team with more opportunities to finetune PUFFER 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 recognise the efforts of the Knowledge Transfer and Commercialisation (KTC) team at IIE for closely guiding and supporting Prof Pan 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 Pan 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 or Jay Chandran from KTC. 

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

Best wishes, 

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