TECH OFFERS

The human nose has 400 different types of odour receptors yet has the ability to recognise about 10000 different smells. Currently, there are different artificial methods that can be used to sense various odours by detecting volatile organic compounds (VOCs). However, many of these methods detect a single type of VOC at any one time or detect the whole VOCs without identification, are often expensive, time-consuming, or require skilled laboratory personnel to perform the procedure. This technology offer is a novel Artificial Olfactory Sensor (AOS) system with pattern recognition using artificial intelligence (AI). This system can simultaneously detect multiple VOCs, and is able to classify the odours through AI techniques. The sensor can detect at concentration as low as 1ppb (parts per billion) and provides a fast sensing speed at 10 second/cycle.  The patented technology can be used in food quality evaluation, air quality evaluation or human healthcare diagnostics.

With the increasing global prevalence of gastrointestinal disorders, the rise in the geriatric population, and the preference for minimally invasive techniques by patients for diagnosis, the demand for capsule endoscopy is expected to grow to $1.2 billion by 2026. But the process of detecting lesions or abnormalities from the images taken by the capsule endoscope is very tedious, time-consuming and error-prone. It takes about two hours for a doctor to read an image due to which the missed diagnosis rate could be high. This technology offer is an AI platform that assists with the clinical diagnosis of endoscopy images and it comprises three deep learning networks that can be used to classify vascular lesions/inflammation, improve the image quality of the area of interest, and upscale the image resolution.

This technology offer is an Intelligent IoT Vertical Farming system, which is designed to be 4-tiered and mobile, for either indoor or outdoor farming. It uses a hydroponic system that grows plants by enhancing the photosynthetic process.  Since the system does not use soil, it is cleaner and more hygienic. FDA-approved and organic mineral nutrients are used for the hydroponic growing.  Compared to traditional agriculture, the vertical farming implementation saves more than 90 percent land area needed, while harvesting 80 percent more per unit area. Furthermore, with the water recycling design, the system achieves a reduction of 70 to 85 percent water usage.  The set-up therefore, promotes the “Go Green” initiative and contributes towards Singapore’s effort to reduce our carbon footprint.  In summary, the following is achieved: More than 90% land savings with more than 80% physical spaces unlocked. 70-85% water savings. Reduced wastages of fertilizers and nutrients.

Transparent conductive films have the function of transmitting both electricity and visible light. Indium tin oxide (ITO) has been widely used as a transparent electrode, but it is not able to meet the demand for lower resistance required in recent years. Metal mesh has been developed as an alternative, but there is a trade-off between lower resistance and finer wiring lines. When a large size is required, transmissivity has to be sacrificed by the increased line width to lower the resistance. The technology owner has developed a double-sided metal mesh-based transparent conductive film using a unique roll-to-roll manufacturing process to achieve a high wiring aspect ratio, low electrical resistance, and high transmissivity at the same time. It also has a very high planarity of the film surface, ensuring stable performance and quality when used as a transparent electrode for thin film applications.

Agarwood (Aquilaria malaccensis) is a fragrant dark resinous wood used in the production of oud oil through distillation. Agarwood and its by-products are associated with many cultures and religious purposes in Middle East, China, Japan, India, etc. They are widely used to produce incense, perfume, medicine, TCM medicine, teas, complimentary health products and more. This technology offer encompasses a distillation process that provides the highest quality of oud oil in terms of purity and density from agarwood. The technology owner is interested to do R&D collaboration and co-development activities with partners from various application fields, e.g., the development of novel complementary health products containing oud in the areas of wellness, medicinal, cultural, lifestyle, and product innovation relating to its by-products or waste.

Image annotation is a critical step in developing computer vision and image recognition systems. Image annotation can be used in applications in a spectrum of deep-tech pillars such as Healthcare/Medical (detecting and diagnosing diseases from radiology or pathology images), Manufacturing (defect detection from image scans), Agritech (plant/crop health check via images and photos), and more. As a result, image annotation is critical in developing Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning (AI/ML) models in a variety of fields. The role of image annotation in deep learning has changed over time. Today, image annotation has become more important for object recognition with new characteristics and capabilities in real-world settings. However, manual labeling of complex objects continues to be time-consuming, tedious, and error-prone - additionally, outsourcing these labeling tasks might not always be the best way due to domain-expertise required in labeling complex image data e.g. radiography images or surface defects on semiconductors. This technology offer is an AI-assisted image labelling tool that enables technical teams to collaboratively, quickly, and easily label large image datasets with pixel-level accuracy masks. As the tool is industry agnostic, it can be used by any industry with a minimal learning curve. The technology owner is keen to work with companies who are looking to build out datasets / ground-truths / and labels for building deep-learning experiments and capabilities, through R&D collaboration and licensing opportunities.

Despite the increasing prevalence of obesity, all FDA-approved medications, which act indirectly on the central nervous system to suppress appetite or on the gastrointestinal tract to inhibit fat absorption, suffer from poor effectiveness and side effects. Most of these medications have been withdrawn from the market. Although liposuction performed in clinics can effectively remove targeted subcutaneous fat, it suffers from invasiveness, high costs, associated risks, induction of compensatory increase of visceral fat. Although thermal lipolysis induced by high-power laser energy is a non-invasive way to reduce subcutaneous fat, its effectiveness is limited and it often causes skin burning. Both liposuction and laser lipolysis cannot improve whole-body metabolism. The technology owner has developed a transdermal mild photothermal therapy directly acting on the root of evil, i.e. subcutaneous fat, to induce its ameliorating remodelling (browning, lipolysis, angiogenesis, and apoptosis), based on the injectable hydrogel encapsulated with photothermal agent. Browning refers to the conversion of energy-storage white fats into energy-burning brown fats. Further, combining with pharmaceutical therapy by codelivery of pharmacological agent leads to a strong therapeutic synergy. This method not only ensures high effectiveness and low side effects due to localized and targeted application but also remotely creates significant improvements in whole-body metabolism (e.g., reduction of visceral fat, relief of diabetic symptoms). In addition, this technology is applicable for cosmetic purposes, e.g., body contouring and reduction of double chin. The technology owner is seeking potential biotechnology companies, clinicians, and other partners to clinically translate and commercialize this technology. Possible modes of collaboration include R&D, process, and product development.

Singapore is currently only producing 13% of its vegetable consumption. With little farming land available, Singapore relies heavily on imports from other countries. Due to increasing focus on food security, the alternative to solve land scarcity problem is to build greenhouses on concrete rooftop. Although concrete rooftop greenhouse are able to keep pests out, there is a signifcant heating problem which severely inhibits the growth of the vegetables. Therefore, there is a need for a rooftop greenhouse that is able to actively cool itself to avoid such problem. This technology offer is a modular rooftop greenhouse farming system (hydroponics) capable of producing vegetables on concrete roofs to meet the local demand while reducing over-reliance on imports. The design of the greenhouse farming system enables cooling and does not heat up, thus allowing the growth of pest-free vegetables. The system is approximately the size of a typical carpark lot (2.5 x 5 m). The production rate is 30 kg per month (2.5 x 5 m size) and requires minimal human intervention. The technology offer comprises both the farming system and its operation know-how. The modular rooftop greenhouse farming system can be set-up within 3 days or scaled-up when required with guaranteed vegetable growth. The break-even cost of one greenhouse is about 3 years. The technology owner is seeking to out-license their technology.

In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for carbon dioxide (CO2) adsorbents due to climate change. These materials can be used for CO2 capture in both flue gas and directly from the air which can mitigate and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The current conventional CO2 adsorbents includes alkaline salts, aqueous amine solution and metal organic frameworks (MOF). However, these materials are expensive (MOF) and suffers from problems such as heat generation (alkaline salt) to energy intensive post-adsorption recovery (aqueous amine solution) which severely limits its wide scale adoption. This technology offer is an amino-based resin adsorbent for low concentration and ambient temperature CO2 adsorption and desorption. This adsorbent is capable of adsorbing low concentrations of CO2 in air at room temperature and generates little heat when adsorbing CO2. It is also possible to capture CO2 from flue gas in the same manner as well. In addition, the regeneration (release of CO2) of the adsorbent can be performed at low temperature with significantly less energy consumption than existing materials.