As the Head of the Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry in Nanyang Technological University, I would like to extend an invitation to you to apply for a faculty position in our University. We are also very keen to explore an undergraduate exchange program between your department and ours, with students from our department going over to your department to take courses and carry out their honours year project and vice versa.
About Our Division
Our division will be focusing on chemical synthesis, catalysis, and biological chemistry. The focus on these areas of research is driven by the strong financial support and long term commitment from our government and private sector.
Our new building, which is modeled after the new synthetic building in Oxford, will be ready by 2007. It has 6 floors with more than 40 offices for staffs and many other amenities with focus on an academic environment that encourages intellectual interactions. Our research labs will have a total of 340, 2m fumehoods over three floors with facilities such as cold rooms, hydrogenation rooms, freezer rooms and solvent purification rooms that serve as common facilities in each level. We have also acquired a series of NMR for supporting research such as a 300MHz, 400MHz and a 500MHz machine (our School of Biological Sciences has 400MHz, 600MHz and 700MHz with cryoprobe). High resolution Mass Spectrometers, LCMS, GCMS, elemental analyzer, X-ray, AAS lasers and many others were also acquired as common facilities. More instruments such as automated synthesizer, confocal microscope, Prep. And analytical HPLCs, etc and facilities are also available in our division.
Currently, until 2007, we already have all the said research facilities housed in several sites in our university, albeit with a smaller research facility of 42 fumehoods at the moment. We will accommodate faculty member in this interim period as much as is possible.
Our teaching labs in the new building are designed to take up to, all-in-all, almost 300 students at any one time. In these teaching labs, we have 200, 1m fumehoods for undergraduate work. Our school will also have high capacity lecture theatres with modern teaching equipments integrated into the design. Note that our undergraduate curriculum is designed based on the ACS guidelines with a strong emphasis on understanding and technical competency.
Our Employment Strategy
We are very keen to employ the best researchers in the world to build a strong faculty. To this end, we plan to provide competitive remuneration, substantial research funding and sufficient research students for our faculty members. We will give a good salary package with subsidies for accommodation and children’s education. We will provide an immediate start-up grant of about US$120,000 and staff members will have the opportunity to submit another proposal immediately after joining the university to further increase their funding. In Singapore, research scholarships come mainly from the university and we will make sure that staff members get an average of at least 2 graduate students per year. Therefore, the faculty member would have about 6 to 8 graduate students when the group matures.
For an idea of our recent current faculty employment, we have managed to secure former student of Goddard's group (Caltech) and another from John Bercaw's group (Caltech).
- Nanyang Professor Koichi Narasaka
- Assistant Professor Chen Hongyu
- Assistant Professor Deng Weiqiao
- Assistant Professor Li Xingwei
- Assistant Professor Richard D. Webster
At a steady state, we will have 35 faculty members with 5-7 in (bio)physical and (bio)analytical chemistry, 5-7 in bio-related areas, 2-3 in computational and 20-25 in chemical synthesis and catalysis.
Type of Candidates we are looking for
We are particularly keen on candidates with creativity, independence, and an uncanny ability to ask new questions or recognize unexamined assumptions. We also like candidates who do not follow established research programmes, but able to develope his/her own new ideas and techniques and solve deep and difficult problems with alternative and rival approaches. If you have any good candidates or you are interested, please do let us know by sending the documents via e-mail to Carolin Ruan (weiting@ntu.edu.sg) or fax (+65 6791 1961). We will fly the candidate in for a campus visit and interview.
Undergraduate exchange program
Please also consider an undergraduate exchange program that would provide your students with valuable experience in working in our vibrant and multicultural environment.
Thank you for your help and kind considerations.
Prof. Teck - Peng LOH
Head, Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry
School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore