Foundation stones laid for two new NTU medical buildings

Singapore

PRESIDENT Tony Tan laid a foundation stone on Thursday at each of Nanyang Technological University's (NTU) two new buildings for its medical school. The buildings will form the dual campus of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), jointly set up by NTU and Imperial College London.

Located at NTU's main campus is the seven-storey Experimental Medicine Building, which will be completed by July, in time for the next academic year. As part of the university's biomedical-engineering cluster, it will be connected to NTU's School of Biological Sciences via a sky bridge and have almost five storeys dedicated to research, NTU president Bertil Andersson said.

The other new building is the 20-storey Clinical Sciences Building, due to open its doors next July, at the school's Novena campus and close to its partner teaching hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The Novena campus is part of Singapore's new medical district, Health City Novena.

President Tan, who is also NTU's chancellor, said he looks forward to seeing the school "make its mark on the world stage through state-of-the- art training of doctors who put patient care first and push the boundaries of care through multidisciplinary research".

The school's current 132 students have been attending classes at the school's headquarters on Mandalay Road and temporary venues in NTU's Research Techno Plaza. Designs of the new buildings' teaching and research facilities (which include a rooftop library and a four-bed simulation ward) were also revealed at the ceremony.

The medical school admitted its first intake of 54 students in 2013. It expects its third cohort in August.