Monkeys by your swimming pool

Two days ago I was rotating at 0.03 rpm aboard the Singapore Flyer , the world’s tallest Ferris wheel. Despite the rainy weather, the view of Singapore’s Marina Centre and central business district clearly evinced the country’s current and growing wealth.

With me in one of the flyer’s observation cars were my hosts for the day, Tracy Won and Patty Woo of Contact Singapore . Formed in 2008, Contact Singapore is an alliance between the Singapore Economic Development Board and the Ministry of Manpower. Its mission is to attract talented foreigners to work, invest, and live here.

Tracy, Patty, and their colleagues work hard. Even though Singapore is a rich, modern country, even though it spends close to 3% of its GDP on R&D, Singapore is hardly foremost in the minds of foreign scientists and engineers who are contemplating a career move.

But during my visit here, which ends today, I met plenty of scientists who moved to Singapore from elsewhere and are thriving. Keith Carpenter, who directs the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences , told me that working in Singapore gave him the chance to influence and participate in science on a national scale.

Oezyilmaz Barbaros moved to the National University of Singapore from the US to set up a lab for studying graphene . His lab is part of the university’s new graphene research center, which is headed by another import, Antonio Castro Neto.

Physicists and other scientists will readily move to other countries to pursue research opportunities. In 1988, right after I’d earned my PhD in the UK, I took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara, an industrial suburb of Toyko and Yokohama.

In Singapore, research opportunities are likely to become more attractive. This past Thursday, the government announced that it would boost the country’s R&D spending by 20%. “What other country is doing that?” Barbaros asked me, knowing that the answer was probably “None.”

Barbaros also told me of Singapore’s other attractions. His house is near Kent Ridge Park . “In the morning, I sometimes see monkeys by my swimming pool.”