Established in partnership with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Institute of Technology, Temasek Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic, and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, NCEB enables new research discoveries, drives technological advancement and develops the talent needed to design and engineer living systems predictively. This whole-of-nation platform strongly positions Singapore in the field internationally. Supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 (RIE2025) plan, the Centre was established through the NRF Mid-sized Grant of close to S$50 million awarded over seven years from 2023.

“NCEB builds on engineering biology capabilities developed over more than a decade, anchored by initiatives such as the NUS Synthetic Biology for Clinical and Technological Innovation (SynCTI) and the Singapore Consortium for Synthetic Biology (SINERGY), and reinforced by strong industry partnerships and interdisciplinary expertise across science, engineering, medicine and computing,” said Professor Matthew Chang, who leads NCEB as Executive Director. He is also the Director of NUS SynCTI and SINERGY, and holds an appointment in the Department of Biochemistry at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

“Through NCEB, we will bring these strengths together, working closely with academic, government and industry partners to create an impactful shared research ecosystem. Our goal is to enable more sustainable ways of making products that society depends on, using renewable feedstocks and cleaner manufacturing processes,” Prof Chang added.

NCEB aims to move engineering biology from largely empirical approaches towards predictive biological design where the relationship between genetic composition and cell function can be understood and modelled to engineer cells that perform reliably. Its work is organised around three research thrusts: machine learning for predictive biodesign, engineering biology for specialty chemical production, and advanced biofoundry capabilities.

Boosting capabilities for predictive design, testing and scaling up

A key research outcome for NCEB is to establish design rules and models that allow researchers to predict how engineered biological systems will behave before they are built. This addresses a central challenge in synthetic biology: living systems are powerful, but difficult to design because they are dynamic and adaptive.

To support this, NCEB is developing shared data foundations and automated experimental platforms that generate large, standardised datasets. These datasets allow results from different laboratories to be compared, combined and used to train AI models.

NCEB’s flagship project, led by NUS, focuses on AI-guided Engineering Biology for Sustainable Specialty Chemicals. Specialty chemicals are a diverse class of high-value molecules, including biosurfactants, specialty lipids, flavour and fragrance compounds, bioactive compounds, and building blocks for advanced materials. Many are difficult to make by conventional chemistry and rely on energy-intensive, fossil-derived processes.

The project aims to engineer microbes and enzymes that convert renewable feedstocks into specialty chemicals using predictively designed biological systems. Its first targets are functional fatty acids, an important class of specialty chemicals used across multiple industrial sectors.

The approach is AI-guided throughout. AI-synthetic biology platforms developed at NCEB propose improved enzyme and pathway designs, which the Advanced BioFoundry – a highly automated research facility at NUS – builds and tests in large numbers rather than one at a time. Results are captured using common data standards and fed back into the models, so each experimental cycle improves the next round of design.

Another highlight of NCEB is the Bioprocessing Innovation Platform (BIP) established in partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology. The BIP addresses the challenge of translating scientific breakthroughs in the laboratory into industrial-scale production, through pilot-scale fermentation and downstream processing capability. The platform houses an integrated fermentation and downstream bioprocessing system supporting process optimisation, scale-up studies and technology demonstration.

NCEB has also developed a digital backbone comprising the AI-Augmented Synthetic Biology Database (SynBioDB), a platform for standardising biological and experimental data; the Synthetic Biology AI Designer (SynDe), an AI platform for biological design; and Enzyme Function Initiative Tools@NCEB (EFI@NCEB), a secure enzyme informatics platform. Please refer to the Annexe for more information on these digital platforms.

Closing the loop between AI design and the laboratory

NCEB’s new facility at NUS is laid out to follow the Design–Build–Test–Learn cycle, with four connected zones: a computational and data zone where AI models propose new designs and learn from the results; a main laboratory for hands-on experimental work; the Advanced BioFoundry where designs are built and tested automatically; and a bioproduction area where the best performers are grown and assessed. This “one floor, one workflow” layout places computational and experimental researchers side by side, shortening the feedback loop between AI prediction and laboratory result — one of the strongest determinants of how quickly the Centre improves.

At the heart of the facility is the Advanced BioFoundry, the experimental engine of the Centre’s Design–Build–Test–Learn cycle, where AI-proposed designs are turned into engineered cells and tested at a scale that manual laboratory work cannot reach.

Key features of NCEB’s new facility include:

• Automated build and test: robotic liquid handlers, an automated colony picker, automated incubators and microplate readers run as a single workflow, so large numbers of biological designs are built and screened in parallel rather than one at a time;
• Ultra-high-throughput screening: single cells are encapsulated in tiny droplets, each acting as a miniature reaction vessel, and sorted by performance to narrow very large populations down to the best producers in a fraction of the time that conventional screening requires;
• High-throughput analytics: liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry systems, together with high-throughput mass spectrometry workflows, measure what each engineered cell actually produces across thousands of samples;
• Integrated bioproduction: laboratory-scale bioreactors and an integrated fermentation and downstream bioprocessing system confirm that promising designs hold up under production conditions, and prepare them for scaleup at the Bioprocessing Innovation Platform; and
• Computing and data: dedicated computing infrastructure hosts the Centre’s AI design models and shared data platforms, capturing results from every experiment in a common format so they can be used across partner laboratories.

A national centre bringing together leading talent

As a distributed national centre, more than 150 researchers, students and professional staff contribute to the Centre’s work across partner institutions, with recruitment ongoing for about 50 more positions. These include principal investigators, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, as well as technical, engineering, laboratory support and centre management staff.

The Centre will also provide research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students.

Strengthening Singapore’s leadership in engineering biology

NCEB’s current goals include bringing the Advanced BioFoundry and BIP into routine use, delivering milestones for its specialty chemicals flagship project, extending the AI-ready synthetic biology data platform SynBioDB to partners and industry collaborators, and growing its industry and international partnerships.

Over the longer term, NCEB aims to establish a fully operational AI-enabled Design–Build–Test–Learn platform, demonstrate scalable production of high-value specialty chemicals from renewable feedstocks, build a federated national data ecosystem, contribute to international standards, and train the next generation of engineering biology talent.

Through these efforts, NCEB will provide Singapore with an end-to-end engineering biology capability — from AI-guided design and automated experimentation to pilot-scale production — supporting cleaner manufacturing, industry translation and the future bioeconomy.

Singapore Engineering Biology Week

The launch of NCEB marks the start of the inaugural Singapore Engineering Biology Week, organised by the Centre. Held from 5 to 8 October 2026, this national-level event will bring together about 300 researchers, innovators, students and industry partners from Singapore and around the world. The programme will cover topics in engineering biology including research, translation, industry and talent. Singapore Engineering Biology Week will be held annually going forward.

• Berita Minggu, 4 October 2026, p14-15

• The Straits Time, 2 October 2026, Opinion, pB4

That experience shifted my priorities. I grew less concerned with finding the right disciplinary label and more concerned with what would go unexplained if the question were left unasked. In a recent commentary in The Straits Times, I argued that recovering geometric structure could help us interrogate medical AI. Here I want to describe how that question took shape, because how research questions form matters as much as how they are answered.

When geometry becomes the question

In analysing complex data, geometry usually plays a supporting role: it helps us organise observations, reduce dimensions or separate groups. The question that came to drive my work inverts that role. What if geometric structure is itself something we should recover from the data — geometry as signal rather than scaffolding? Manifold fitting, which seeks to recover a lower-dimensional structure from noisy observations in high-dimensional space, gives this idea a concrete statistical form.

This changes what counts as an answer. A method can classify observations accurately without recovering the structure we set out to understand. So the test is no longer only whether a method works, but whether the task captures what we actually want to know.

Before a project has a name

This conviction shapes how I work with students. On Saturdays, those who wish to join meet with me for open-ended conversations about problems we find important. We ask why a problem deserves attention and whether any part of it is ready to be explored. An idea need not arrive with a method or a clear route to a solution, and I share in that uncertainty. Some problems lie beyond what I currently know how to tackle yet still seem worth thinking about. My own experience has made me wary of forcing a familiar formulation too early.

Applications keep these conversations grounded. An observation a method cannot explain may expose a weakness in the method or reveal something important about the phenomenon, sometimes changing the question itself. Many ideas never become projects; some lose their appeal after further reading, others stay out of reach. But there is a quieter form of progress worth valuing: when a vague concern sharpens into a question precise enough to show where to begin. The aim is for students to find questions they have their own reasons to pursue, including ones that lead beyond where I first pointed.

Staying with a question

Talk of using AI to generate research questions tends to skip the harder part. Finding a question is one thing and deciding it is worth staying with is another. That judgment rarely arrives all at once. It develops through reading, discussion and attempts that expose what one has misunderstood. A question can remain worth pursuing even when no route to an answer is visible and, equally, familiarity can supply good reasons to let it go.

When near-term results looked unlikely, I was sometimes advised to move on. It was genuinely hard to tell whether slow progress signalled a flawed direction or simply how much I still had to understand; the absence of quick results settled nothing. As I prepare to speak on “Geometry as Signal” in Germany this winter, I keep returning to the question that started this work, and to how much my understanding of it has changed.

That is what I bring to our Saturday conversations. Where an unfamiliar question will lead is often impossible to see in advance. Learning not to dismiss it too quickly, and learning when it is worth staying with, is a part of research I am still navigating myself.

Yao Zhigang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the National University of Singapore’s Faculty of Science, with a joint appointment in the Department of Mathematics

• The Business Times, 1 October 2026, p6

• The Business Times, 1 October 2026, p52

These are among the questions being explored through the Health District @ Queenstown (HD@QT), where NUS researchers work with residents and partners to develop and test health and social solutions with communities in real-world settings. The aim is not simply to create new tools, but to understand how technology can make preventive health and care more accessible and relevant to everyday life.

Smart screening

One project will soon bring contactless health screening into the Queenstown community. Led by Dr Yoann Sapanel, Head of Health Innovation at the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM), Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine), the study will explore whether a wellness kiosk could provide a convenient way to engage people in their health and identify those who may not know they are at risk of hypertension. The kiosk uses remote photoplethysmography (rPPG), a contactless technology that uses a standard camera to detect subtle changes in facial colour caused by blood flow with each heartbeat. These changes, which are invisible to the human eye, can be used to estimate vital signs.

The issue is significant. About one in three Singapore residents aged 18 to 74 has hypertension, according to the National Population Health Survey cited by the project team. Of these, more than half were unaware they had the condition.

From 11 November 2026, residents visiting HD@QT's Come 4Tea Lah! community hub will be able to participate in the study, which is conducted in collaboration with Singapore health technology company Nervotec. Participants will undergo a facial scan at the kiosk and answer a few questions. The technology will subsequently be trialled at Happy Village @ Mei Ling.

For Dr Sapanel, testing the technology in Queenstown is crucial to understanding whether it can work beyond controlled research environments.

“Running this pilot in Queenstown, in a real-world environment rather than a lab, lets us test whether the kiosk meets a clinical need and something residents themselves would actually want help with, which is very much in line with our co-creation approach,” he said.

Importantly, the study is not intended to replace clinical assessment. Researchers will examine how residents respond to the technology, including whether they are comfortable using it, what makes them trust the results and whether those receiving a higher-risk reading subsequently consult a doctor.

Living longer, living better

Other NUS researchers are exploring how technology can support health as people live longer.

At National Engineers Day 2026, Dr Sapanel joined Associate Professor Bina Rai and Dr Rubin Yong from HD@QT's Technology and Innovation team to share their work in preventive health, cognitive health and eye care.

Together with her team, Assoc Prof Rai, from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Design and Engineering at NUS, has developed a digital cognitive training platform that uses games inspired by familiar activities such as gardening to engage older adults. The platform adjusts the level of challenge according to individual performance, enabling more personalised cognitive training.

Dr Yong, a Research Fellow at the NUS Centre for Innovation and Precision Eye Health (INVISION), is working on another aspect of healthy ageing. The FourSight project explores community-based monitoring for people at risk of glaucoma, with the aim of making routine eye monitoring more accessible while connecting it with existing healthcare services.

While the technologies differ, the researchers share a common approach: taking innovation beyond the laboratory and designing it around the people expected to use it. Through HD@QT, researchers can pilot ideas in community settings, gather feedback from residents, and work with healthcare and industry partners to understand what it takes for promising technologies to work in everyday life.

As Singapore's population lives longer, such approaches could open new ways to support health and independence — not only when people enter the healthcare system, but also in the communities where they live.

Find out more about Health District @ Queenstown.

Few are better placed to understand these changes than the Department of Geography at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (NUS Geography), where researchers and students have a front-row seat to the forces reshaping our world.

Research that informs policy in Singapore and shapes debates worldwide has put NUS Geography among the global leaders in the discipline: first in the 2026 ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, for the second consecutive year, and fourth in the 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject.

The results come as the Department continues to evolve both what and how it teaches and the research questions it tackles.

Over the years, the Department has refreshed its curriculum, embraced new technologies and forged connections with other disciplines, while its researchers continue to expand the boundaries of geographic inquiry to address emerging challenges.

“Modern geography sits at the intersection of people, places and the environment, helping us understand not only how the world is changing, but also how these changes affect the way we live, work and shape our communities,” said Professor David Taylor, Head of the Department of Geography.

“The result is a geography education and research that is no longer confined to understanding the world as it is but also helps students explore how it might be shaped in future and how we might best respond in anticipation.

Changing geographies for a changing world

Today, studying geography broadens not just students’ perspectives on global issues, but also their career paths.

Alongside a Geography major, students will have the option to pursue a new Second Major in Environmental Science for Sustainability from January 2027, complementing their geographical understanding of people, places and environments with scientific perspectives on environmental systems, sustainability and change.

Technology is also changing how geography is studied. New interdisciplinary courses launched under the NUS College of Humanities and Sciences cover topics such as clean and just energy (which considers both the environmental and social dimensions of a low-carbon energy transition), earth studies, and the motivations behind environmental decisions.

The Geospatial Intelligence Cross-Disciplinary Programme (GIX), introduced in 2026, is the first bachelor’s degree of its kind in Asia. Offered in collaboration with the School of Computing, the programme allows a pioneer batch of 28 students to explore new frontiers in the field, including geospatial data, computing and artificial intelligence (GeoAI). This enables them to better understand and respond to issues ranging from climate change and smart city design to urban planning and business planning.

At the same time, the Department’s graduate programmes have also expanded into areas like climate change and planetary health where geographical perspectives are increasingly important.

Building on the Master of Science (MSc) in Applied GIS launched in 2015, and the MSc in Climate Change and Sustainability in 2024, the upcoming Master of Social Sciences in Planetary Health and Wellbeing postgraduate programme will explore the connections between human health, wellbeing and the environments in which people live. It is slated for introduction in 2027.

All the Department’s taught Master’s graduate programmes are stackable, offering flexibility to students to take a graduate certificate before building towards a graduate diploma and full Master’s degree incrementally.

Breaking research frontiers

Outside the classroom, research at NUS Geography is tackling complex challenges that have wide-ranging implications for Singapore, from climate issues such as urban heat, rising sea levels and carbon governance; to ageing and migration; and even how changes in finance, money and markets have uneven impacts within communities and across space.

Professor Elaine Ho, for example, has led numerous research projects on ageing and social networks in Singapore. They have contributed significantly to policymaking and infrastructure planning, ensuring that older Singaporeans have opportunities to remain physically mobile and socially connected as the country moves into a super-aged society.

Elsewhere, Dr Remi Luo is leading a project funded by the National Parks Board to monitor Singapore’s green spaces over the long term to generate insights that inform climate-resilient urban planning.

Meanwhile, Professor Matthias Roth, a prominent researcher in urban climatology, is collaborating with the National Environment Agency on research to improve forecasting of weather and climate conditions so that tropical cities such as Singapore can better prepare for extreme weather, reduce risks and strengthen climate resilience.

As new frontiers emerge, Geography will continue to ask new questions about the places we inhabit, even as they extend into areas such as outer space and virtual worlds.

For the next generation of geographers — researchers, faculty and students alike — this means engaging with a discipline that is constantly uncovering new questions, new connections and new possibilities, and in doing so matching the skillset of its graduates with the ever-changing requirements of society.

• The Straits Times, 30 September 2026, Opinion, pB3

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said the result reflects the sustained efforts of the University’s faculty, researchers, staff, students and alumni.

"The accolade belongs to every member of our community: our faculty, researchers, staff, students and alumni, and I am proud of what we have achieved together," said Prof Tan.

The University’s upward trajectory has been built over the years through deliberate efforts to strengthen the quality of its education, raise the rigour and relevance of its research, and deepen its partnerships across the world.

“We embedded interdisciplinary thinking into how our students learn, and built AI fluency into how they work. This is not a one-off result. It reflects intentional, sustained effort over many years,” Prof Tan added.

Strong performance across core indicators of teaching and research

NUS’ rise to 15th this year was driven largely by stronger scores in teaching and research. The results come as universities worldwide respond to shifting expectations around education, research and the role of technology and AI.

At NUS, these shifts have been accompanied by efforts to prepare students for a fast-changing world and to translate research into real-world impact, as well as deeper engagement with industry and society.

In August this year, NUS expanded its strategic collaboration with OpenAI to widen access to advanced AI tools for students, faculty and staff, and introduced a compulsory foundational AI module for all first-year undergraduates starting Academic Year 2026/2027.

The University has also continued to strengthen interdisciplinary education and research. Beyond developing new courses that prepare students to work across disciplinary boundaries, NUS has also been fostering more interdisciplinary research, bringing together expertise across disciplines to tackle complex challenges. The Centre for Computational Social Science and Humanities, for example, combines AI and computational methods with expertise in social science and humanities to examine issues at the intersection of technology and society.

Prof Tan said rankings provide one measure of NUS’ progress, but “what matters more is the difference our graduates make in society, the lives and policies our research improves, and the role NUS plays in building a better Singapore and a better world. That is what gives this ranking its meaning. And that is what will guide us into the future.”

THE assessed universities across 17 calibrated performance indicators this year, spanning teaching, research environment, research quality, international outlook and industry. This year’s edition covered a total of 2,297 institutions across 118 countries and territories, making it one of the most comprehensive and closely watched university rankings globally.

Mr Phil Baty, THE Chief of Global Affairs, said NUS’ move into the world’s top 15, its highest-ever position, was a “remarkable achievement”.

“NUS performs exceptionally well on every one of [the rankings’] core pillars, so there is real strength-in-depth,” he said, adding that the University’s combination of high research quality, close industry links and an international approach makes it “a truly world-class university.”

The University of Oxford retains its top spot in this year’s rankings, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in second place, with Princeton University and Stanford University tied for third.

The full THE World University Rankings 2027 results are available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/latest/world-ranking.

Over two weeks in the towns of Maun and Kasane, 24 students from NUS College of Alice & Peter Tan (CAPT), affectionately known as CAPTains, heard from community leaders, researchers, educators, local organisations and conservation practitioners about the choices and trade-offs involved in protecting the environment while supporting livelihoods and communities. The journey was part of the NUS Global Relations Office’s Study Trips for Engagement and EnRichment (STEER) programme, which gives students first-hand exposure to the diverse sociocultural environments of emerging regions.

For many, the experience challenged assumptions about what conservation looks like on the ground — and revealed how questions of wildlife, livelihoods, tourism and local knowledge are closely intertwined.

The many sides of the Okavango Delta

These questions came into sharp focus at the Okavango Delta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world’s largest inland delta systems.

The Delta offered students a window into the different ways in which the same landscape can be understood. It is an important ecosystem rich in biodiversity, a source of livelihood and tourism, and a place with deep cultural significance for communities who have lived in and around it for generations.

For Year 2 Industrial Systems Engineering and Management student Jayven Koh, the experience changed how he thought about the relationship between conservation and communities.

"What struck me was that the Delta isn't just a wildlife area; it's a vital water source that entire communities depend on. I also realised how important it is to distinguish between local and indigenous communities, because they have different relationships with the land,” he said.

“Without recognising those differences, conservation efforts risk overlooking the knowledge, histories, and needs of the people they aim to support."

At the Okavango Research Institute, the students learnt how researchers study the Delta’s ecology, water systems and conservation challenges. Conversations with local guides and educators added another dimension: environmental knowledge can also be built through generations of lived experience.

Safari guides, herders and community members, for example, may draw on close observation of seasonal flood patterns, animal behaviour and wildlife movement in their everyday lives.

Encountering these different perspectives underscored that understanding a landscape can require more than one way of seeing it — and that locally grounded knowledge can complement scientific research in shaping approaches to conservation.

Conservation starts with community

Another important lesson emerged from encounters with community organisations: conservation and sustainable development can also depend on whether local people have opportunities to participate and benefit.

At social enterprise Thari-E-Ntsho Storytellers, the students saw how storytelling, upcycling and cultural tourism could help preserve traditional knowledge while creating income opportunities for women, young people and informal workers.

They also encountered initiatives such as Green Horizons Network, which seeks to make environmental education more accessible and give young people opportunities to engage with conservation.

Its upcycling project, which taught women to make affordable bead-making tools and work with readily available scrap materials rather than expensive ready-made supplies, left a lasting impression on Year 1 Psychology student Ravshaan Singh.

“What stayed with me was that in Botswana, community-based work wasn’t just about generating income, it was about making participation possible. This really reflected how inclusion was intentionally built into the project,” he said.

Across their visits, the students saw a recurring emphasis on keeping initiatives accessible, locally appropriate and rooted in the communities they served.

They also learnt about the challenges such organisations face in sustaining their work over the longer term, particularly when programmes depend on donor funding. Some are therefore exploring hybrid models of combining tourism, education and community enterprises to broaden their sources of income and strengthen local ownership.

Living alongside wildlife

Perhaps one of the most immediate takeaways from the Delta experience was the everyday negotiation between human and wildlife spaces.

For instance, the students were prompted to think differently about the commonly used term “human-wildlife conflict”.

“Calling it ‘conflict’ puts blame on the animals,” said a trainer from the Botswana Wildlife Training Institute.

Rather than seeing people and animals simply as opposing forces, students were encouraged to consider their coexistence and the overlapping needs and pressures that arise when both depend on the same land and resources. The strategies used to manage these interactions vary widely, from fencing and chilli-based deterrents to reduce elephant crop damage, to compensation schemes and regulated hunting quotas.

One major approach is community-based natural resource management, which seeks to give communities a greater stake in managing and benefitting from the natural resources around them.

This challenged some of the students’ assumption that communities living close to Botswana’s wildlife would naturally want to protect it. What they encountered was far more complex — living alongside wildlife can bring costs as well as benefits, particularly when animals threaten crops, livestock or livelihoods. Conservation therefore depends not simply on an appreciation for wildlife, but also on finding ways for communities and conservation goals to coexist.

Bringing the lessons home

By the end of the journey, Botswana had given the students more questions to consider than simple answers.

For one, the students’ experiences abroad prompted them to look closer to home. While Singapore and Botswana face very different environmental circumstances, the underlying question remained similar: how can societies protect nature while taking into account the people and communities that live alongside it?

Significantly, such exchanges were made possible by a partnership that CAPT has built and sustained in Botswana for close to a decade.

Dr Toh Tai Chong, Director of Residential Life at CAPT and co-lead of its STEER programme, said: “In 2027, CAPT will mark 10 years of partnership with communities and organisations in Botswana. Their generous support over the years has enabled our students to see issues from different perspectives, deepen their understanding of Botswana, and forge lasting friendships and connections across our communities.”

But perhaps the most enduring lesson from Botswana was this: learning to see conservation not as an isolated environmental issue, but something shaped by people’s livelihoods, cultures, economic realities and relationships with the land.

• The Business Times, 28 September 2026, p15

Electronic skin systems are increasingly used in healthcare, robotics and wearables, but most rely on arrays of sensors connected to external electronics for signal processing and display. These designs often face limitations such as low spatial resolution, wiring complexity and inefficient signal interpretation, making intuitive real-time feedback difficult.

To address these challenges, a team led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck from the NUS Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology (iHealthtech) developed a soft, ultrathin device called the “eLuminator”. The findings were published in Nature Communications on May 2026.

A new paradigm beyond conventional electronic skin

Unlike traditional electronic skins that rely on discrete sensing pixels and typically achieving less than 100 dpi (where dpi indicates how finely pressure details can be resolved within a given area), the eLuminator uses a continuous, pixel-free design. With a spatial resolution of approximately 30 µm (847 dpi), it can detect much finer pressure details, enabling high-precision tactile sensing for advanced applications.

At the core of the technology is a mechano-electroluminescent response, where applied pressure directly changes the device’s light emission. When pressure is applied, the device generates visible light patterns that map both the magnitude and shape of contact. This enables immediate and intuitive visualisation without the need for separate processing or display systems.

The high-resolution luminescent response allows fine surface features such as the ridges and valleys of fingerprintsto be clearly captured in real time, demonstrating its capability for detailed tactile imaging and potential use in biometric applications.

“This technology transforms how we interact with tactile information,” said Prof Lim. “Instead of relying on complex electronics, users can immediately see force distribution as it happens, making the process far more intuitive.”

Applications in healthcare and intelligent systems

The eLuminator shows strong potential in surgical training and healthcare monitoring, where precise force control is critical but difficult to achieve due to the lack of tactile feedback. When integrated into surgical tools, it provides real-time visual feedback on applied force, improving precision and reducing the risk of tissue damage. It can also map pressure distribution on the foot, supporting early detection of areas with high risk of foot ulcers in diabetic patients.

Beyond healthcare, the device enables more responsive human–machine interface. It supports both static and dynamic sensing, with optical feedback of around 15 milliseconds and digital readout of around 110 milliseconds, allowing force interactions to be visualised and quantified in near real-time. Its high sensitivity also enables the detection of gentle touches, which is important for robotics and prosthetics.

Soft, durable and versatile platform

The eLuminator is ultrathin, approximately 70 µm thick, and made of flexible, non-toxic materials designed to mimic the mechanical properties of human skin. It can stretch beyond 100 per cent strain and conform to curved surfaces such as the body or medical devices.

The device remains stable under repeated mechanical stress, with consistent performance demonstrated over more than 1,000 to 4,000 cycles. It also operates across a broad pressure range, from light touch to approximately 180 kPa (similar to the pressure felt when balancing a heavy textbook on a fingertip), making it suitable for diverse applications.

By combining visual and digital sensing in a single system, the eLuminator simplifies device design and enables easier integration into next-generation wearable and biomedical technologies.

Future directions

The research team is working to further improve the device’s sensitivity and reduce its power requirements, while advancing deployment in high-impact healthcare applications.

“Our focus moving forward is not just to improve the technology, but to apply it where it can make a real difference to patient care,” said Prof Lim. “By working closely with clinicians, we aim to develop solutions that improve outcomes and support better decision-making.”