First meeting of the France-Singapore Joint Committee for Science and Innovation
The first meeting of the France-Singapore Joint Science and Innovation Committee (COSIMIX) was held on 14 November 2019 in Paris. Proposed by the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI), Ms. Frédérique Vidal, on the occasion of the launch of the France Singapore Year of Innovation in January 2018, this initiative was made public by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Mr. Heng Swee Keat, at the closing ceremony of the Year of Innovation on 15 March 2019.
A total of some 40 people attended the session, attesting to the dynamism of bilateral cooperation and the interest in strengthening existing ties. The themes chosen for this first session were artificial intelligence applied to health and smart cities on the one hand, and environment and circular economy on the other. Workshops for each of these topics were organized on the eve of the COSIMIX meeting, attended by some 15 experts from France and Singapore.
The Singaporean delegation, led by Professor Low Teck Seng, Chief Executive Officer of the National Research Foundation Singapore, included representatives from the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technology University, as well as AI Singapore and the National AI Office, the newly established body responsible for implementing Singapore’s new strategy for artificial intelligence.
The French delegation, led by Bernard Larrouturou, Director-General for Research and Innovation at MESRI, was composed of high-level representatives from CNRS, Inserm, CEA, Inria, INRA, PSL, Sorbonne University, University of Paris, ESSEC, Ecole Polytechnique and Telecom Paris. It is worth highlighting the unprecedented participation in this type of committee of players involved in innovation and transfer: BPI France, the FrenchTech Mission and Thalès.
This first meeting of COSIMIX highlighted the shared interest of both parties in strengthening and diversifying existing cooperations. Real complementarities and synergies were thus highlighted. Both sides agreed on the importance of fostering the translation of research into industry, bringing our entrepreneurial ecosystems closer together and exchanging young talent between our two countries.
