SINGAPORE’S national eye research centre wants to expand so that it can increase its number of researchers and brings its 130 staff – now scattered in five locations – under one roof.
To do so, the Singapore Eye Research Institute (Seri) will need up to $20 million yearly to run, double its current budget, said its new head, Professor Wong Tien Yin, 41.
But unlike universities which have endowments, or government-run institutes which enjoy generous payouts, most of Seri’s funding comes from research grants for specific projects, where researchers are expected to identify the problems and compete for grants to work on them.
“A lot of our time is spent writing grant papers instead of doing the actual research,” he said.
“And for us to grow and compete internationally, we do not need a certain amount of base funding. If not, I won’t be able to bring in a new research group from overseas, for example, because I don’t have the funds.”
Another limitation of grants is that they typically last three to five years, said Prof. Wong. This means they are usually awarded to projects which can show results within this time frame. “It makes it difficult for us to do long-term planning and for us to do novel, out-of-the-box work, “he said.
Though Prof Wong, who took over Professor Donald Tan at the beginning of the year, has not come up with a detailed fund-raising plan yet, he wants to kickstart his fund-raising effort by publicizing the institute’s work to make it well known to potential donors.
Once that is known, it would be easier to reach out to, say, the business community, for donations.
Seri partners the Singapore National Eye Centre, hospitals and research institutions here and overseas.
More than 90 per cent of research publications coming from Singapore on eye research is from Seri.
The institute is now based at the Singapore National Eye Centre in Outram, alongside the Singapore General Hospital, but its researchers are located in different buildings within the Outram campus, as well as the National University Hospital in Kent Ridge. It wants to increase its staff strength – doctors, scientists and administrators – by one-third, to 200. It is still deciding where it wants its new home to be.
One institute which benefited from a generous private donation is the National Cancer Centre of Singapore (NCCS), which received a pledge of $20 million in 2007 from the family of the late tycoon Khoo Teck Puat to set up the Humphrey Oei Institute of Cancer Research.
Said its head, Professor Soo Khee Chee: “Donations are very useful because they provide a certain peace of mind.”
He said, however that ultimately a large pool of regular small donors is more sustainable than depending on that windfall. The NCCS has about 2,700 regular donors, who together contribute a total of $3,000 to $15,000 monthly. About 60 per cent of them are patients.
Prof Wong, whose institute has yet to receive such donations, believes that the philanthropic culture in Singapore is not yet geared towards medical research.