​The inaugural SingHealth Duke-NUS Research Day was held at Academia today, 21 January 2016. Here are highlights of the event.


To encourage collaborations that will generate patient care innovations, SingHealth and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) announced a new five-year research tie-up at an MOU signing ceremony today.
 
To boost research projects under this tie-up, SingHealth and NTU also announced a grant worth S$2 million, which will fund six joint research projects of up to S$300,000 each.
 
 
Q&A with Nobel Laureate Dr John Robin Warren. He and his colleague, Barry Marshall, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 for the their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease.
 
He shared that their finding was a classic case of bench-to-bedside collaboration. If he hadn’t met with Dr Barry Marshall, his discovery would just remain a published paper.
 
The doctor’s dogged curiosity to find out more led to the clinical implications of his find, which turned out to be a medical milestone and an eventual Nobel Prize win. 
 
 
Keynote lecture by Sir Richard Roberts. Sir Richards was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Phillip Allen Sharp for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing.  
 
In his lecture, "Does basic research count in Medicine?", he shared his personal journey to his most important discoveries. To him, there are three things that are essential for success in research: freedom to do blue-sky research, embracing failure and luck.
 
He said, "I've learned to love failure. If an experiment gives you results you didn't expect, nature is telling you something."
 
Presentation of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Research Team Award, followed by presentations by four budding researchers from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre.