MOU signing between SAF and SUTD – Speech by SUTD President Professor Phoon Kok Kwang

Good afternoon,

Major-General Cai Dexian, Chief of Army;

Distinguished guests from the Singapore Armed Forces;

SUTD colleagues and friends.

A warm welcome to SUTD. We’re delighted to host you today for the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding between SAF and our university.

More than a formal agreement, this MOU marks a significant milestone in our ongoing partnership — one grounded in shared values: innovation, operational excellence, and national service.

We’re already seeing promising outcomes. From digitising complex building layouts for more effective routing and planning, to manpower optimisation for quick reaction forces, to developing next-generation decontamination robotics — these are just a few of the initiatives already underway. They reflect how SUTD’s deep technology and Design·AI capabilities can be meaningfully applied to real-world defence needs.

One such effort is the adaptive wargaming platform you’ll see demonstrated today. Originally created by a recently ORD-ed commando National Serviceman as a passion project, it explores how artificial intelligence (AI) — particularly large language models — can support military planning. Building on this, our team of students enhanced the system to enable dynamic scenario planning and real-time simulations using publicly available U.S. military doctrines as proxy data. While not a command-and-control tool, it demonstrates how low-risk, accessible Design·AI applications can enhance decision-making. Hosted in our new Design·AI Fab Lab — or Building Zero — this initiative reflects how SUTD empowers students to experiment with frontier technologies, supported by high-performance computing infrastructure.

This demo also reflects our bold pivot as the world’s first Design·AI university.

Design·AI is not just about changing our curriculum but redefining a post-AI university that will nurture human-machine design innovators that are 10 to 100 times more effective in all dimensions. Perhaps it will usher a new zeitgeist for learning, innovating, and working — the vast contours of this change are unveiling in SUTD as we speak.

In this era of exponential change, we need more than just access to AI to thrive — what we need is a strategy. At SUTD, that strategy is Design·AI.

Design·AI goes beyond just building tools — it’s about designing with AI to serve human needs, not replace human judgment. It’s about learning to ask better questions, designing with people in mind, and creating value that AI alone can’t. And it’s about knowing when to delegate, when to collaborate, and when to say: this is a job for a human. It’s about integrating AI into the design process in a human-centred way — combining creativity, ethics, empathy, and critical thinking with purposeful innovation.

As such, we don’t just teach students to use AI. We teach them to partner it — as a creative collaborator that expands imagination and as an innovation catalyst that accelerates breakthroughs. We also teach them to use a critical lens with AI, just as they do with fellow human beings — scrutinising, debating and ignoring information where it isn’t accurate. Human and machine working together can create more than either could alone.

This philosophy shapes how we teach and design. Every SUTD student learns by doing — solving real-world challenges from day one, in multidisciplinary teams. By graduation, they’ll have completed at least 26 project-based courses — many in partnership with industry or government agencies. We’re especially proud to spotlight student-led work like the wargaming platform — a great example of bottom-up innovation and the value of fresh perspectives in shaping mission-critical solutions. There is no hallucination when Design·AI ends with a prototype that works and can be used in the real world as a minimum viable product.

As SAF shifts toward shorter experimental cycles and more agile development, we recognise the need for flexible, responsive collaborations. SAF is a highly desired partner for SUTD’s Design·AI narrative, because we share the same goal that innovation will be key to our future, we share the same urgency and willingness to transform, and we share the same measure of success — quoting immediate past COA David “Can eat or not?”

This MOU aims to streamline our engagement — so we can move quickly from ideas to prototypes, and from experimentation to operational impact. Looking ahead, we see this partnership as a strategic platform to co-develop capabilities, co-invest in young talent, and co-imagine defence futures where technology drives meaningful advantage.

To SAF, thank you for your trust and partnership. We are honoured to walk this journey with you, in designing a smarter, safer, and stronger Singapore.