Nanyang Technological University

In 1955, prior to Singapore's independence from the British, Nanyang University was established south of the current Nanyang Technological University campus, with the centre of the present Yunnan Garden as its heart. Its administration building currently houses the Chinese Heritage Centre, a national monument.

In 1980, Nanyang University merged with the University of Singapore to form the current National University of Singapore. In complement, Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI), a tertiary institution affiliated to the National University of Singapore, was formed to take over Nanyang University's campus in 1981.[8][9]

Nanyang Technological Institute (NTI) was set up on 1 August 1981 with a charter to train three-quarters of Singapore’s engineers.

When NTI started in 1982, it had a total student population of 582 in three engineering disciplines – civil and structural, electrical and electronic, and mechanical and production engineering. By 1990, the institute’s undergraduate student population had grown to 6,832. The first two graduate students were admitted in 1986.

Three engineering schools were added, and the School of Accountancy from the National University of Singapore was transferred to NTI in 1987. A school of applied science was also started. In 1990, the government announced that the Institute of Education would be merged with the College of Physical Education to form the National Institute of Education and that it would be part of the new NTU upon its establishment in 1991.

In 1991, NTI merged with the National Institute of Education (NIE) (founded in 1950) to form the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The alumni rolls of the former Nanyang University were transferred to NTU in 1996. Historically, Nanyang Technological University admitted students jointly with the affiliated National University of Singapore and charged the same fees. Students made only one application and they would be accepted by either university. This arrangement ended in 2004 as both universities began to distinguish themselves with an end of its official affiliation. Currently, students apply separately to both universities.[8][9]

NTU became autonomous in 2006 and stands as one of the two largest public universities in Singapore today.[10]

NTU is currently a collaborative member of Singapore International Graduate Award for PhD applicants worldwide, which comprises Agency for Science, Technology & Research (A*STAR), the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

NTU has been listed as one of the World's Most Beautiful Universities, featuring the ADM building in the report.[11] It has also been listed in "The 10 most beautiful universities in East Asia", featuring the Learning Hub building.[12] During NTI period between 1981 and 1982, the main campus layout including the building complex, the so-called North Spine, has been designed by a world-renowned Japanese architect, who is also 1987 Pritzker Prize winner, Kenzō Tange.[13] The North Spine has been officially opened in 1986.[14] The ADM building, featured in "Travel + Lesiure" report,[11] has been designed by a young Singaporean architect Lee Cheng Wee. [15] The Learning Hub building, also called the Hive, featured in "Times Higher Education" report,[12] has been designed by a British designer Thomas Heatherwick.[16]

The main campus of Nanyang Technological University is the 200-hectare (2.0 km²; 0.77 sq mi) Yunnan Garden Campus (Chinese: 云南园) which is situated adjacent to the town of Jurong West. It is the largest university campus on the island of Singapore, housing Singapore's largest on-campus residence infrastructure including 24 halls of residence for undergraduates and two graduate halls.

The campus grounds were originally donated by the Singapore Hokkien Association to Nanyang University. In 1981, the Nanyang University grounds were granted to the Nanyang Technological Institute, a newly formed English-medium engineering college. With the formation of the NTU through NTI's merger with the National Institute of Education (NIE), the grounds were then presented to the university.

The former Nanyang University administration building was restored into the Chinese Heritage Centre and was gazetted as a national monument in 1998 - now overlooking the Yunnan Garden. As of 2019, the Yunnan Garden is undergoing major renovations that will be completed in 2021. However some of it has been partially opened to the public in early 2020 The Nanyang University Memorial and original Nanyang University Arch were also declared national monuments of Singapore in 1998. The NTU Art & Heritage Museum is an approved public museum under the National Heritage Board’s Approved Museum Scheme; benefactors who donate artworks and artefacts to NTU enjoy double tax deductions. There is a small lake between the Chinese Heritage Centre and Hall of Residence 4 called Nanyang Lake. Only members of NTU Anglers' Club permit holder, the fishing club at NTU, are allowed to fish in this lake.[17]

The campus also served as the Youth Olympic Village for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in 2010.[18]

• 
  Administration Building of Nanyang Technological University.
• 
  Chinese Heritage Centre, formerly the Administration Building of Nanyang University.
• 
  Nanyang Lake

Clinical Sciences Building

A third campus, Novena Campus, is situated close to LKCMedicine’s partner teaching hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital in downtown Novena for medical teaching and research at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. The new 20-storey Clinical Sciences Building was completed in 2016. The CSB is home to LKCMedicine researchers, with the laboratories interconnected through collaborative spaces.

Nanyang Technological University Residential Hall

NTU has 24 Halls of Residence for undergraduates, each with a capacity of between 500 and 659 residents. They accommodate 14,000 local and international students,[19] with every freshman guaranteed a hostel room. All halls are co-ed by floor or wing and offer single and double occupancy rooms. Double rooms are shared by residents of the same gender. Every hall has communal facilities like lounges, air-conditioned reading rooms, pantries and laundry rooms with washing machines and dryers. Presently, freshmen students will be guaranteed a room for two years.[20]

Nanyang Business School (NBS) is the largest business school in Singapore[25][26] with over 6,800 undergraduates and postgraduates. It is also the No.1 business school in Singapore and 3rd in the Asia-Pacific region according to the Financial Times. For 13 consecutive years since 2004, the Nanyang MBA has been ranked the best in Singapore according to The Economist. NBS has more than 160 professors from more than 20 countries, proficient in 30 languages holding doctorates from the most renowned universities in the world. This makes NBS one of the largest business schools in the world in terms of faculty strength.[27][28]

NBS is the only business school in Singapore to offer the 3-year direct-honours single degree programme in Business or Accountancy. Its widely popular double degree programme in Accountancy and Business can be completed within 3.5 – 4 years, and the newly introduced integrated Bachelor & Master's programme takes 4 years to complete. Students enrolled into the Business programme are allowed to specialise in their penultimate year of study in one of six areas, namely: Actuarial Science, Banking & Finance, Business Analytics, Human Resource Consulting, Marketing, Risk Management and Insurance. Those who choose to major in Banking & Finance have the added option to choose one of three specialised tracks which include 'Platform-based Learning' and 'International Trading'. NBS also houses the 165-square meter Centre for Applied Financial Education, the largest finance lab in Singapore. The new lab is equipped with 60 dedicated Thomson Reuters Eikon terminals with Datastream, along with 24 Bloomberg terminals that will allow business school students to access all kinds of real-time financial, economic and business news information.[29]

School of Art, Design and Media

HASS consists of four schools:

• The Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information is a school of communication studies and offers courses in Journalism, Broadcast, Advertising, Communication Policy and Information Studies. It originally established in 1992 and it was named after Singapore's former president Wee Kim Wee in 1995.
• The School of Art, Design and Media is Singapore's first professional art school and offers an undergraduate programmes in Art, Design, and Media, as well as graduate degrees in arts research. Its building, which features a sloping grassy roof surrounding a central courtyard, is frequently featured in NTU's promotional materials.[30] NTU called for a design competition which drew entries from well-known architects. A young Singaporean architect's design proposal emerged as the winner. ADM is the brainchild of a Singaporean architect, Lee Cheng Wee. About a decade later, he designed the centre-piece of Q-Plex in Shenzhen, China, with similar style.
• In 2016, NTU announced that they will be splitting the School of Humanities and Social Sciences to 2 separate colleges: the School of Humanities (SOH) and School of Social Sciences (SSS) - to accommodate the rising intake of students.[31]
  • The School of Humanities which offers programmes in a wide variety of fields including Chinese, English Literature, History, Linguistics & Multilingual Studies and Philosophy.
  • The School of Social Sciences which offers Economics, Psychology, Public Policy and Sociology.[32]

The College of Engineering is NTU's largest subdivision. It is claimed to be the world's largest engineering college, with a student population of more than 10,500 undergraduates and 3,500 graduates.[33] It consists of six schools (Chemical and Biomedical, Civil and Environmental, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Electronic, Materials Science, Mechanical and Aerospace) focused on technology and innovation.

The college offers a rich array of multidisciplinary programmes and specialisations in traditional engineering disciplines and beyond. In addition to the 12 single degree programmes, the college also offers double degrees, double majors and integrated programmes as well as the only aerospace engineering programme in Singapore.[34]

Today, the college consists of three schools and is home to about 150 faculty members (more than 15 of which are Singapore National Research Foundation Fellows), 340 research staff, 110 administrative and technical staff, 4,000 undergraduate and 750 graduate students.

• The School of Biological Sciences was established in 2002 and offers a variety of programmes in the Biological Sciences and also a unique and innovative "East meets West" double degree programme in Biomedical Sciences and Traditional Chinese Medicine with the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine in China. Students may also pursue a second major in Food Science and Technology, which is in conjunction with Wageningen University in the Netherlands, to gain understanding about food processes with an engineering and industrial point of view.
• The School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences was established in 2005 and offers various disciplines in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics. Students also have the choice of several multidisciplinary programmes such as Chemistry and Biological Chemistry with a second major in Food Science and Technology and/or with optional concentrations in current topics such as Green Chemistry and Nanotechnology, Physics with a second major in Mathematical Sciences and the combined major in Mathematics and Economics.
• The Asian School of the Environment is a new interdisciplinary School established in 2015 to focus on Asian environmental challenges, integrating Earth systems, environmental life sciences, ecology, and the social sciences to address key issues of the environment and sustainability. Strong interdisciplinary links between ASE and the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE), the Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) and the Complexity Institute provide a community for tackling large research questions.[35]

The Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine was established in 2013 in collaboration with Imperial College London. Prior to its opening in 2013, the school received record donations of S$400 million, including S$150 million from the Lee Foundation. The School’s primary clinical partner is the National Healthcare Group.[36]

NTU's Graduate College was formed on 1 August 2018 and is in charge of graduate programmes in NTU. One notable focus of the college is the Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme (IGP), which focuses on the key research areas within NTU's Peaks of Excellence in Sustainable Earth, New Media and Future Healthcare. Research in these areas span across different disciplines beyond the conventional school-based programmes. IGP leverages on professors from all the schools and colleges in NTU to undertake interdisciplinary research and to act as advisors for IGP PhD students.[37]

NTU hosts a number of autonomous research and educational institutes.[38][39]

• The National Institute of Education (NIE), occupying 16 hectares (0.16 km²; 40 acres) in the western part of NTU's Yunnan Garden campus, is Singapore's main teaching college and is run in close collaboration with Singapore's Ministry of Education. Full-time teachers in Singapore's public schools are required to complete a post-graduate diploma course at NIE, sponsored by Singapore's Ministry of Education.[40] NIE is also internationally acclaimed and provides educational consultancy to countries from Indonesia to UAE.
• The S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), named after Singapore's former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, offers graduate programmes in international relations and is an autonomous graduate institution of NTU. The school has the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies—long recognised as a world authority on strategic studies and terrorism. RSIS was ranked second among university-affiliated think tanks in Asia in the 2011 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings.
• The Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) is a unique interdisciplinary Research Centre of Excellence (RCE), funded by National Research Foundation, Singapore Ministry of Education, Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore. Hosted by the NTU in partnership with NUS, SCELSE is linking new insights from the Life Sciences with expertise from the emerging technologies in Engineering and Natural Sciences to understand, harness and control microbial biofilm communities. The union of these fields has established a new discipline of Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.
• The Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS) is an autonomous research institute specialising in Earth Sciences and conducts fundamental research on earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis & climate change in and around Southeast Asia, towards safer and more sustainable societies.
• The Wealth Management Institute (WMI) is a practice-based education and research institute with a comprehensive suite of practice-based programmes deeply integrated and aligned to serve the needs of the wealth and asset management industry. Established in 2003, with the support of Temasek Holdings and GIC Private Limited to catalyse Singapore’s growth ambition as a premier international wealth management centre, WMI has in close collaboration with Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Institute of Banking & Finance (IBF) as well as the Wealth Management industry, played an instrumental role in expanding and deepening the skills and expertise of professionals in the industry. With a wide range of accredited wealth and asset management programmes covering topics from investment products, portfolio allocation, client engagement, trust and estate planning, to risk management and a MSc Asset and Wealth Management,[41] programmes incorporate an Asian focus with a global perspective. WMI has benefited much from the stewardship and leadership provided by Temasek Holdings and GIC Private Limited to build its capabilities and industry network and has developed deep connections and fostered rich networks with industry thought leaders, senior practitioners, regulators as well as academics.[42]

• Major Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono - Indonesian National Armed Forces, Chief of Operations in Kostrad, son of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono
• Gen. Tito Karnavian - Indonesian National Police, former Head of Detachment 88, elite anti terror group in Indonesian police, former head of Jakarta Regional Police Division, now head of Indonesian National Police.

• Masagos Zulkifli - MP for Tampines GRC, Minister for Environment & Water Resources
• Low Yen Ling – MP for Chua Chu Kang GRC, Parliamentary Secretary
• Sim Ann – MP for Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, Minister of State
• Zaqy Mohamad – MP for Marsiling-Yew Tee GRC, Senior Minister of State
• Melvin Yong - MP for Radin Mas SMC, Assistant Secretary General National Trades Union Congress
• Cheryl Chan - MP for East Coast GRC
• Yip Hon Weng – MP for Yio Chu Kang SMC
• Wan Rizal Wan Zakariah - MP for Jalan Besar GRC
• Ng Ling Ling - MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, former Managing Director of Community Chest and 2018 Her World Woman of the Year
• Darryl David - MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC
• Derrick Goh - MP for Nee Soon GRC
• Ang Wei Neng - MP for West Coast GRC
• Desmond Tan Kok Ming - MP for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC

• Gerald Giam Yean Song - MP for Aljunied GRC

• Ang Mong Seng ^PAP – Former MP for Bukit Gombak SMC
• Intan Azura Mokhtar ^PAP – Former MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC, Assistant Professor at National Institute of Education
• Lee Bee Wah ^PAP – Former MP for Nee Soon GRC
• Inderjit Singh ^PAP – Former MP for Ang Mo Kio GRC
• Teo Ser Luck ^PAP – Former MP for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC, Mayor and Minister of State
• Yu-Foo Yee Shoon ^PAP – Former MP for Yuhua SMC and Minister of State
• R Sinnakaruppan^PAP[65] – Former MP and first Students' Union President
• Low Thia Khiang^WP – Former MP for Hougang SMC and Aljunied GRC, former Secretary-General of the Workers Party of Singapore
• Yee Jenn Jong^WP – Former Non-Constituency Member of Parliament
• Cheo Chai Chen ^SDP – former MP of Nee Soon Central SMC
• Sebastian Teo Kway Huang ^NSP– President of the National Solidarity Party

• Tan Chin Hwee – CEO of Trafigura
• Chade-Meng Tan – Jolly Good Fellow, Google Inc

• Shirley Meng – Professor of NanoEngineering at University of California, San Diego and two-time laureate of the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists
• Yew-Kwang Ng – Albert Winsemius Professor of Economics at NTU and Emeritus Professor in Department of Economics, Monash University

• Ho Ho Ying - Abstract artist.
• Liang Wern Fook - Composer, poet and essayist.
• Sarah Choo Jing - Multidisciplinary fine artist.
• Zihan Loo – film director, actor, dancer.
• Quek See Ling - Poet, writer, Chinese ink painter and editor.
• Darryl Yap - Filipino Film Director, Writer and Producer.[66]

• Dipna Lim Prasad – National Hurdler
• C Kunalan - Former National Sportsman, and Educator at the National Institute of Education
• Calvin Kang Li Loong - National Sprinter
• Lee Wung Yew - Multiple SEA Games gold medallist in shooting.

• Bertil Andersson – Biochemistry
• Freddy Boey – Materials Engineering
• Balazs Gulyas – Neuroscience
• Philip Ingham – Zebrafish models for Human diseases
• Daniela Rhodes – Structural and Molecular Biology
• Kerry Sieh – Geology and Seismology
• Rudolph A. Marcus – Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1992
• George James Augustine – Irene Tan Liang Kheng Chair Professor in Neuroscience

• Grace Chia – Literature
• Liang Wern Fook - Chinese Studies, Mandopop singer-songwriter, Xinyao pioneer
• Nadia Magnenat Thalmann - Computer graphics

• Vijay Sethi – First Economist Intelligence Unit Business Professor of the Year

• Joseph Walther – Communication theorist
• Richard Ling – Social consequences of mobile communication

• Farish A. Noor – Political Scientist and Historian

Although NTU occupies the grounds of the former Nanyang University (NU), and has a similar name, it is not a direct continuation of that institution. In 1980, the Government of Singapore forcibly merged Nanyang University with the University of Singapore to form the present-day National University of Singapore (NUS). This was a source of significant discontent amongst NU students and alumni, because NU had been a Chinese-medium university, whereas the newly merged NUS was (and is) an English-medium university.

As NTU subsequently grew into a full university, various efforts were made to have it claim the Nanyang University mantle. In 1996, the alumni rolls of Nanyang University were transferred from NUS to NTU. In 1998, the prominent local calligrapher and poet Pan Shou, who had been the first vice-chancellor of Nanyang University, called for NTU to be renamed Nanyang University, as a way to "quieten the hearts of many" NU alumni.[67] In 2003, this idea received further support from NTU president Su Guaning, during an interview with the Chinese-language paper Lianhe Zaobao. One reason offered for the renaming was that, by the mid-2000s, NTU no longer had a narrow focus on technical subjects, but had become a full university including studies in the humanities.

However, the NTU administration's renaming plans soon encountered significant push-back. One NU alumni, Zhu Yong-an, circulated the results of a straw poll in which NU alumni came out strongly against the idea; respondents complained that NTU could not provide "continuity" for the "murdered" Nanyang University.[68] Finally, after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong weighed in on the affair,[69] the administration dropped the idea quietly in 2006 and has not raised it since.

In 2013, there was a debate over academic freedom in Singapore when Cherian George, an outspoken academic at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communications who had publicly criticised Singapore's system of media control and its ruling People’s Action Party,[70] did not get tenured. Although George had been recommended for tenure by the Wee Kim Wee School, his application was turned down by a university-level committee which included representatives from the Government of Singapore. One of the reviewers for the tenure case, Cardiff University's Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, expressed outrage at NTU's decision,[71] and George's thesis advisor, Stanford University's Theodore Glasser, raised doubts about "NTU's reputation as a university of international standing" and "NTU's commitment to academic freedom".[72] Despite a petition against the tenure decision by students at the Wee Kim Wee School, George's appeal against the tenure decision was subsequently rejected by the university.[73]