Launch of SUTD CoLab – Speech by SUTD President Professor Phoon Kok Kwang

Mr Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information,

Dr Tianyi Jiang, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of AvePoint,

Distinguished partners, colleagues and friends of the media,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon.

A very warm welcome to the launch of SUTD CoLab, an “all can innovate with AI” space. As AI transforms the way we live and work, one question matters more than ever: how do we ensure that everyone can benefit from it?

At the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), we believe that preparing for this future begins with expanding human capability. AI can help people solve problems, develop new ideas and achieve more than they could before. Our responsibility is to help them develop new human skills, confidence and judgement to do so. That is the ambition behind SUTD CoLab: to enable Singaporeans and enterprises to shape their future with AI.

Familiarity with AI alone will not prepare our workforce for the changes ahead. People need opportunities to apply what they learn, experiment and turn ideas into practical solutions. Our message is simple: build with AI, not only know AI. Our emphasis is on reskilling our workforce for a fast-changing technology landscape, not just on AI or solutions. Humans need a different way to grow with AI. They start here. I was told that 155 professionals have already started this journey.

Take Seet Fun, the co-founder of Art Loft studio. After attending an AI workshop with SUTD, she and her team developed an AI-assisted documentation solution that turns their art educators’ lesson notes, photos and voice recordings into personalised updates for parents. Their educators now spend less time on documentation and more time with the students, while parents gain clearer insights into their children’s learning.

Her story shows that real value for enterprises comes not from AI alone, but from redesigning workflows and knowing where to apply AI and where not to. From fostering more social interactions and fulfilling more human needs. Not less.

This is design innovation, and it brings me to SUTD Design – what it is, and how it can make a difference. Over the past 17 years, SUTD has matured into a world-renowned institution for bringing design and technology together. At SUTD, design means creating human-centred solutions that transform lives. In practice, it rests on three principles.

First, we begin with people. What challenges do they face? What would make their lives or work better? What are the problems worth solving? We start by understanding and framing the right problem before deciding how AI can help.

Second, we build, test and improve. By combining creativity, empathy and critical thinking, the solutions developed are not only innovative, but also useful to the people they serve. Human and AI can team up to do this quicker and with much less effort than in the past.

Third, human judgement must remain central. People must be able to discern when to trust AI, when to question it and how to use it responsibly. This is an essential part of AI fluency.

Proven over 17 years, SUTD Design nurtures design innovators who can turn ideas into working prototypes. For the past two years, it has also trained innovators to partner AI through this “human-AI-human” pedagogy that sets out which tasks stay with people (no AI) and which people and AI tackle together. Since 2025, SUTD has worked with more than 2,800 C-suite executives and senior leaders through executive Design·AI programmes, helped transform more than 90 small and medium-sized enterprises and trained over 1,200 professionals through initiatives such as the AI Impact Series. In doing so, SUTD has shown that all can innovate.

These three principles of SUTD Design underpin CoLab, which puts them into practice through three stages – Learn, Build, Deploy. It brings together learners, enterprises and community partners, and guides them from workplace challenges to working prototypes.

At the Deploy stage, AvePoint and MaivenPoint provide the expertise to help enterprises integrate tested prototypes into everyday operations, ensuring they work with existing systems and can be used responsibly. This is what the industry calls ‘forward deployed engineering’ – engineers working alongside enterprises, within their own operations, to take solutions from prototype to production. Talent with these skills is in short supply. We want to help more people build this capability.

As AI extends into physical systems, including robots and buildings, CoLab will support these applications too. Our researchers are already developing ways to rate how ready a building is for robots, much as we rate buildings for accessibility and fire safety. You will see more of this work at today’s showcase – from humanoid robots learning to move and respond in unfamiliar spaces, to Dragonfly, a mosquito-control robot developed at SUTD and now commercialised with industry, and Talk2Print, which lets anyone design and 3D-print an object simply by talking to it, with AI correcting errors in real time as it prints.

Importantly, the opportunities created by AI must be accessible to people from all walks of life. Our community partners understand the needs of the people they serve, and our industry partners understand economics and the realities of work. Both are essential to making learning relevant and useful across ages, abilities and communities.

Later today, a dedicated workshop for SG Enable’s stakeholders will put this commitment into action. We plan to reach out to seniors next, helping them discover how AI can be useful in their daily lives.

In closing, I would like to thank the Skills and Workforce Development Agency, Lifelong Learning Singapore, AvePoint and MaivenPoint, our industry and community partners, and the SUTD Academy team for helping to bring CoLab to life.

I invite each of you to bring us a challenge that matters to your organisation or community, and we will help you turn it into an opportunity to innovate. Ultimately, CoLab’s success will be measured not by how many people learn about AI, but by how many are empowered to put it to meaningful use.

As PM said during 2026 Budget Speech, the world has “changed”. So must we.

Thank you.