We are pleased to announce that Assistant Professor Zhang Wenxuan has been awarded the prestigious Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Fellowship.

Assistant Professor Zhang was awarded this fellowship for his project, “A Holistic Framework for Multilingual Multicultural Multimodal Large Language Models”, which aims to advance artificial intelligence (AI) to better serve diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds worldwide.

Current leading AI systems predominantly cater to major languages and Western cultural contexts, largely operating through text alone. This disparity leaves many communities, particularly those with less commonly spoken languages or non-Western perspectives, underserved by the very tools shaping the digital age.

Assistant Professor Zhang’s project sets out to close this gap. Rather than treating language, culture, and modality as separate problems, it pursues a single, holistic framework in which large language models can understand diverse languages, reason with cultural sensitivity, and communicate naturally across multiple modalities. The ambition is to reshape how AI is built so that inclusiveness is designed in from the outset, rather than added as an afterthought.

With a particular focus on Singapore and Southeast Asia, one of the world’s most linguistically and culturally diverse regions, the project builds on Assistant Professor Zhang’s established expertise in large language models and widely adopted open-source initiatives. It aims to deliver not only scientific advances, but also lasting foundations that the broader research and developer community can build upon.

The ultimate objective is inclusive AI that respects how different communities speak, think, and live, ensuring these increasingly essential tools truly serve everyone, at home and around the world.

About the Singapore NRF Fellowship
The Singapore NRF Fellowship provides opportunities for early career researchers to carry out independent research in Singapore, over a five-year period. It is open to all areas of science and technology, and outstanding young scientists and researchers of all nationalities are welcome to apply. Each Fellow is provided with a research grant to support projects that exhibit high likelihood of a research breakthrough.