Nobel laureates, along with Millennium Technology Prize, Turing Award, and Fields Medal winners in physics, chemis- try, biology, mathematics, computer science, and other fields. GYSS programming featured plenary and breakout ses-

sions led by the guest speakers, along with site visits and tours of local labs such as the Institute of Medical Biology, the Earth Observatory of Singapore, and the Institute for Media Innovation. Evenings were reserved for social visits to some of Singapore’s main attractions — the Singapore Flyer, Night Safari, and the Singapore Night City Tour. The majority of educational programs were held at NUS’s Edu-Sports complex, a sports and fitness facility that also houses an auditorium where plenary sessions and the clos- ing ceremony took place. While breakout sessions and pan- els were closed to the public, media and other guests were able to attend plenary talks, including South African biolo- gist Sydney Brenner on “Humans in a Dish” and American physicist Eric Cornell on “Extreme Meteorology: Towards Measuring the Out-of-Roundness of the Electron at 10-15 Femtometers.” I mingled with some of the attendees at registration prior to the opening ceremony, which featured a speech by Hean. This portion of the event was held at NUS’s University Cultural Centre, a large building with a lobby brightened by floor-to-ceiling windows, set in a lush landscape of palm trees and other foliage. Along with registration, an appetizer-and- coffee reception took place in the lobby, one of many signs that Singaporeans are not inclined to let guests go hungry. Much of the chatter was of the getting-to-know-you

variety — scientific specialties, country and institution of origin, whether there’d be cocktails after the ceremony. But I did get a chance to speak with a few of the attendees about what made them attend GYSS. “Most of the programming and the list of Nobel laureates was set by the time they sent out invitations” in September 2012, said Benjamin Toh Pang Kiat, a post-doctoral researcher in immunology at A*STAR. “Usually a few [Nobel Prize winners] will come in [to Sin- gapore] each year, but it is unprecedented to have so many here at once.”

R&D&GYSS

Unprecedented GYSS was, for a variety of reasons. Although Singapore is well known for hosting high-level science, technical, and medical meetings, this was the first event of its kind drawing young and accomplished scientists together in Singapore — conceptualized when President Tan, who is the former chairman of the NRF, attended the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Lindau, Germany, in 2010. The annual Lindau meeting describes itself as a “globally recognized forum for the transfer of knowledge between generations of scientists”; the idea was for the NRF to create a similar event, with a focus on Asian participation, that would expose young scientists to the development of a knowledge economy — one

78 PCMA CONVENE APRIL 2013

Rapt Audiences Eager young researchers at GYSS listened to Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath (top), a panel discussion on

‘The Ups & Downs in the Life of a Scientist’ (middle), and American physicist Eric Cornell.

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