Dr Lim Jui to helm SGInnovate from May 2020

Source: SGInnovate. Dr Lim.

The SGInnovate Board has appointed Dr Lim Jui as the company's CEO, effective 1 May 2020. He will be taking the helm from Steve Leonard, who will be concluding his term as Founding CEO.

Dr Lim has more than 20 years of experience in innovation, research commercialisation and investment. He joins SGInnovate from NTUitive, a subsidiary under the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) charged with the mandate to commercialise research and to build a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Prior to NTUitive, he was the co-founder and Executive Director of the Medical Engineering Research and Commercialisation Initiative (MERCI,) a medical device accelerator at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Concurrently, he was the inaugural Programme Director of the Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Programme (SSB), a joint venture between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), and Stanford University.

Dr Lim is a registered medical practitioner. He received his Bachelor of Arts (BA, Biological Sciences and East Asian Studies) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Columbia University, and obtained his M. Med (Anaesthesia) from NUS.

“I am fortunate to have experienced commercialisation through multiple lenses as an investor, startup CEO, and most recently, seeing through early-stage technology commercialisation. I hope to bring this experience to bear at SGInnovate.

"I intend to build upon the very considerable successes of SGInnovate by focusing on the deep tech sector in which Singapore has established competitive advantage and thought leadership, but which remains relatively underfunded. Deep tech startups need more tangible support than others,” said Dr Lim.

SGInnovate is committed to the mission of helping entrepreneurial scientists build and scale deep tech startups. Having achieved success since its inception in 2016, it sees itself continuing to work closely with a wide range of partners and co-investors to support entrepreneurial scientists through equity-based investments, access to talent and business-building advice.

Yong Ying-I, Chairman, SGInnovate said, “The Board and management are confident that given Jui’s experience in commercialising research and bringing new technologies to international markets, under his leadership, SGInnovate will be able to continue its good work in building and strengthening the deep tech ecosystem in Singapore.”

Deep tech refers to technology that is based on scientific discovery and engineering innovations, and which could have a lot of impact on our lives in future. It tends to require more time from the research and development phase to the commercialisation phase.