London office of Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine opens

Friday 21 January 2011

Imperial’s partnership with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to develop Singapore’s third medical school, recently named the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, was celebrated at the opening of the project’s London office on Friday 21 January.

The office, which will co-ordinate Imperial’s contributions to the creation of the medical school, including the development of the curriculum, is housed on the twelfth floor of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Building on the South Kensington Campus. His Excellency Michael Eng Cheng Teo, Singapore’s High Commissioner, opened the office in the presence of staff from NTU and Imperial who are involved in the project.

At the opening ceremony, Professor Martyn Partridge, Senior Vice Dean of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, thanked staff across the College who are already contributing to the success of the new medical school, for example through considering the academic support the trainee doctors will need, from library facilities to e-learning tools.

Speaking of his vision for the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Professor Partridge said: “The ethos is to produce the sort of doctors that you and I would like to have caring for us. In our teaching we must maintain the scientific basis of medicine and ensure that patients are at the centre of all care.”

Singapore’s High Commissioner Michael Eng Cheng Teo said the project had prompted deep interest in Singapore and highlighted the ambition of the new school to deliver the highest standards of education: “High quality is a hallmark of what we do in Singapore and in our third medical school we hope to achieve just that.” Congratulating the partners on the collaboration, he said: “It’s not easy to bring two universities and two cultures together but if anyone can do it, Imperial and NTU can.”

In early January, NTU announced that the Lee Foundation had made a gift of 150 million Singaporean dollars to the new Singapore medical school with half of the sum going directly to needy students. Thanks to the Singapore government’s pledge to provide enhanced matching to endowed donations, NTU will receive a gift amounting to $400 million. In recognition of the gift, the new medical school has been named the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, after Tan Sri Dato Lee Kong Chian who founded the Lee Foundation in 1952.