Whether in medicine, manufacturing or machine learning, Singapore today stands as a vibrant international hub for cutting-edge R&D, industry partnerships in research and translation, and deep tech startups. Far from resting on its laurels, however, the country is gearing up for a new phase of research, innovation and enterprise (RIE) efforts to realise even greater economic value and address critical national and global challenges such as ageing societies and a warming planet.
In December 2025, the Prime Minister of Singapore announced that Singapore would invest a new tranche of S$37 billion in RIE2030, a five-year national strategic plan to strengthen national competitiveness and resilience in a changing global landscape. Building on the outcomes of RIE2025, RIE2030 will focus on creating value in high-impact areas, sustaining long-term investment in priority domains, and preserving globally competitive basic research capabilities that underpin future breakthroughs.
In this interview with A*STAR Research, A*STAR Chairman Chorh Chuan Tan looks back at A*STAR’s achievements under RIE2025, reviews the strategic objectives set for RIE2030, and outlines the agency’s role in supporting the nation’s scientific and technological vision.
1. What are some key directional shifts from RIE2025 to RIE2030?
The planning for RIE2030 took several major factors into account. The global geopolitical, economic and technological landscape is changing profoundly. At the same time, scientific and technological advances are accelerating at an unprecedented pace. Here at home in Singapore, strategic priorities such as energy, climate change and an ageing population are becoming increasingly salient.
Together, these shifts present both major challenges and significant opportunities for the country. Against this backdrop, RIE will become increasingly crucial to enhance our competitiveness, drive economic growth and help address national priorities.
RIE2030 will therefore have a sharpened focus on value creation. A major new initiative is the launch of a few large RIE Flagships and Grand Challenges, designed to advance critical economic sectors such as semiconductors, as well as national priorities like healthy and successful ageing. Mission-focused initiatives will also be implemented at the RIE domain level, targeted at growing new or strengthening existing economic areas. In addition, there will be redoubled efforts to grow innovation and enterprise (I&E) talent in Singapore and strengthen our deep tech ecosystem.
Another significant shift is the specific focus on building strong capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI), data and computation to enable cutting-edge research and innovation. Crucially, in tandem with all these, we will continue to invest in basic research and talent, supporting breakthrough science that can lead to paradigm-moving ideas and applications in the long term.
2. What is your vision for Singapore’s scientific and technological landscape over RIE2030, in light of national priorities?
The vision is for Singapore to be a major hub that attracts and nurtures world-class RIE talent—from Key Opinion Leaders who create consequential impact to promising young researchers who can become tomorrow’s global leaders. Singapore should be among the world’s leaders in key research fields, with a vibrant and productive I&E ecosystem that contributes significantly to economic growth and societal advancement. The country should further grow as a compelling partner for industry, and a critical R&D node for strategic industry sectors.
To this end, we will extend—or develop the next phase of—key economic sectors such as semiconductors, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, biomedical technology, our seaport and airport, and AI. We will also grow emerging new areas such as quantum technology, green technologies and new AI-based applications. Concerted RIE efforts will target national priorities such as ageing, energy, decarbonisation, and heat resilience and coastal protection against climate change.
3. What will success look like for Singapore's scitech landscape in RIE2030?
To better monitor progress towards our longer-term goals, we need to move beyond key performance indicators that are easily measured but do not reflect the outcomes we ultimately seek. For larger programmes, we should also describe, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, the ‘future state’ to be attained if they succeed. This would translate into a set of parameters and milestones by which to better track progress and make timely course adjustments.
For example, consider the goal of developing reliable biomarkers for more targeted interventions to prevent or treat dementia. The initial step could be breakthrough scientific discoveries of novel biomarkers which accurately identify individuals and groups highly susceptible to the onset or progression of cognitive impairment. The next steps could involve validation of these biomarkers in clinical and general populations; field deployment pilots to confirm their reliability in real-world settings; and their concurrent or subsequent commercialisation and/or adoption at scale in the health system. Such a series of indicators or milestones—which could extend over several years—would allow monitoring of sequential progress and impact.
4. How is A*STAR gearing up for RIE2030?
A*STAR is making strong progress across several fronts that will position it well to contribute to our national aspirations. I would like to highlight three areas that are particularly important.
Firstly, A*STAR has redoubled its efforts to recruit and nurture talent across a broad range of scientific disciplines and is extending those efforts beyond researchers to I&E talent, engineers, data scientists, specialist technologists and expert programme managers.
Secondly, A*STAR is enhancing the support it offers to talented individuals and teams to do excellent work and realise impact, whether in basic science, translational research or industry partnerships that tackle difficult challenges in both. In particular, A*STAR will build further on the environment and culture that promotes and enables truly cross-disciplinary research and teamwork, as well as impactful translation.
Thirdly, A*STAR is working very closely with stakeholders and partners in the wider RIE ecosystem to achieve the desired RIE2030 outcomes. The agency is taking the lead to drive some programmes while playing an active supporting role in others.
5. Looking back at RIE2025, what A*STAR achievements would you like to highlight?
Our RIE capabilities achieved impact in many disciplines and sectors; I can only cite a few notable examples here. Some of our most visible contributions were made during the COVID-19 pandemic, when biomedical researchers contributed substantially to the global understanding of SARS-CoV-2 and the immunology of infection and vaccination in our population.
Among our institutes, the A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs (A*STAR IDL), A*STAR Singapore Immunology Network (A*STAR SIgN), A*STAR Genome Institute of Singapore (A*STAR GIS) and A*STAR Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (A*STAR IMCB) were prominent contributors. The A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing (A*STAR IHPC) also played a crucial role in modelling epidemic transmission. These collective efforts were critical in informing public health policies and practices that allowed successful containment of the pandemic in Singapore.
In RIE2025, many R&D breakthroughs and commercially important contributions were also made in the semiconductor sector. In A*STAR, these were led by the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics (A*STAR IME) with the strong support of the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (A*STAR IMRE), A*STAR IHPC and other agency entities. Key highlights included the strong growth in the scope and depth of industry collaborations and the acquisition of A*STAR spinoff Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF) by GlobalFoundries.
The tranche also saw strong and exciting developments in basic research, as well as industry partnerships in the AI and quantum technology sectors. A*STAR contributed significantly to these as the host of the National Quantum Office and in several other ways. Significant advances were also made in RIE initiatives that contributed to Singapore as a liveable and resilient city, including innovations in urban design, coastal protection and heat resilience.
6. To support RIE2030, what mindsets, culture and goals would you hope the RIE community to adopt?
In RIE2030, I hope our RIE community will further elevate our ambitions and boldly pursue them. We have built strong capabilities across many areas, and many exciting new opportunities are emerging; we should actively seize them.
To do so, I hope that our researchers, institutions and stakeholders will collaborate even more closely. We need the best people to work together across institutions and sectors for Singapore to have its best chances at excelling globally, being attractive as a strategic partner, and creating even greater impact.
Given the fast-changing external environment, we have to work with greater speed and agility as an RIE system, and be able to seize new opportunities quickly and pivot as conditions change. I hope that our institutions and agencies will continue to contribute to this actively, even as we introduce greater flexibility in our policies and practices.
