SINGAPORE – It is not often that young scientists get the chance to schmooze with Nobel Prize winners, but more than 340 young scientists did just that recently.
They spent the past week, starting from Jan 6, engaging leading experts in science and technology from around the world at the Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2025, held at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from Jan 6 to 10.
The summit’s 13th edition drew participants from 49 countries, a 40 per cent increase from 2024, marking the highest attendance in the last five years. This reflects the rise in global prominence of GYSS, offering more opportunities for young scientists to showcase their work and interact with established scientists, engineers and technopreneurs.
Among the 18 distinguished speakers were Nobel Prize laureates Aaron Ciechanover and Takaaki Kajita, and Professor Sue Black, one of the world’s leading anatomists and forensic anthropologists.
Four of the 18 also spoke at the summit for the first time – Professor Joan B. Rose, an international expert in water microbiology, water quality and public health safety; Professor Yael Kalai, a cryptographer and theoretical computer scientist; and Nobel Prize laureates Louis Ignarro, who received the prize in 1998 for physiology or medicine, and Steven Chu, who clinched the physics prize in 1997.
In his opening address on Jan 7, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said: “Many of the challenges humanity faces are global in nature – be they pandemics, climate change, energy and food security, or sustainability. While we must enact safeguards against rogue actors, we must also harness the value of collaboration and partnership.”
DPM Heng, who is also chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF), added that by bringing together more of the best minds, “sharing a common purpose of tackling these challenges, we better our chances of success and breakthroughs”.
Organised by NRF Singapore, the summit is the only international gathering in Asia that allows young scientists to engage with experts in various fields.
It started in 2013 with the objective of exciting and engaging young scientists to pursue their scientific dreams through close interactions with distinguished scientists and researchers, and with peers.
The multidisciplinary summit covers topics such as chemistry, physics, medicine, mathematics, computer science and engineering and its speakers include recipients of the Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, Millennium Technology Prize and Turing Award.
NRF chief executive John Lim said: “Initiatives like the Global Young Scientists Summit provide opportunity for young scientists worldwide to gather for a five-day immersion, to engage with groundbreaking ideas, be inspired by world leaders in their fields, learn from each other, and imagine new possibilities for the future of science and humanity.”
Mr Adolphus Lye, 30, an NUS research fellow at the Singapore Nuclear Research and Safety Institute, said: “The summit’s discussions help spark better ideas and novel approaches to solving research problems better and more creatively. That is the beauty of GYSS. It fosters interactions between participants from different disciplines, generates opportunities for collaborations, and solves problems of today.”
A*Star graduate student Uma Jingxin Tay, 25, who is studying molecular interactions in plant based foods, said her biggest takeaway is from listening to the Nobel laureates, “which is not an opportunity I get every day”.
“Listening to them has made me more curious and perceptive in my research, such as viewing anomalies as opportunities for discovery and research rather than obstacles,” she added.
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