Singapore's Defence Medical Research Institute (DMRI) Joins DSO National Laboratories

BG (Ret) Assoc Prof Lionel Lee
Director DMERI@DSO

          The DMRI was originally formed in 1995 to coordinate and conduct human science and biomedical research aimed at enhancing the safety, survivability and performance of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel.
          Previously under the the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), DMRI has now become part of the DSO National Laboratories (DSO) with an effective date of 1 October 2003. We believe that this move will enable us to reap greater synergy from the research efforts of the two R&D entities to better serve the unique requirements of the Singapore defence community in sharpening the cutting edge of Singapore 's national security.
          Through this move, our biomedical scientists and human factors professionals will be able to tap on DSO's wide range of expertise in the physical, chemical, and information sciences areas as well as the depth and breath of DSO's engineering expertise and perspectives. To reinforce this, DSO's current Centre for Chemical Defence will be integrated with DMRI to form a new cluster known as the Defence Medical and Environmental Research Institute @ DSO National Laboratories (DMERI@DSO). The cluster is headed by myself, with Dr. Lee Fook Kay as Deputy Director.
          DMERI@DSO will spearhead, coordinate and conduct biomedical, human sciences, environmental protection and chem-bio defence research to enhance the safety, survivability and performance of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel ad where applicable and appropriate, contribute to the larger national security as well. The custer will have the following 3 centres of excellence:

• Centre for Biomedical Sciences
• Centre for Chemical Defence
• Centre for Human Performance

          With these, DSO will now have 15 centres of excellence. While striving for excellence in their respective capability areas, the 15 DSO centres are also committed to fusing their expertise for interdisciplinary R&D wherever possible. We will also leverage on local and overseas collaboration as capability multipliers.
          We believe that the coming together of DSO and DMRI presents a golden opportunity for us to not only to further synergise our defence R&D efforts but to exploit opportunities at the interface of physical, information, and biomedical sciences, as well as to enable us to better provide technologies and solutions that can sharpen the cutting edge of our national security.