At an awards ceremony held in Singapore, Accion Andina, GRST, WildAid Marine Program and S4S Technologies were recognized for their outstanding achievements in climate change research and innovation.

Singapore prizes, medals and awards span an extensive list, from trophies and plaques to state decorations and cups. However, what makes Singapore prizes truly remarkable is their focus on merit rather than luck or fortune.

Established as part of Singapore’s 50th Anniversary commemorative program in 2014, the Singapore History Prize is given out every three years to a book which makes an outstanding contribution to historical knowledge in Singapore. Professor John Miksic’s Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea: 1300-1800 was the inaugural winner in 2018.

Professor Miksic of NUS’ Department of History and Chair of the Prize Jury revealed that his book was not meant as an academic tome but instead intended to highlight the discoveries at Fort Canning, as well as thank those who had participated in excavation efforts with volunteer efforts at Fort Canning – including more than 1,000 volunteers who volunteered time and labor on excavation projects – for their hard work.

The NUS Singapore History Prize is an inaugural book award dedicated to Singapore history. The 2024 shortlist includes Wesley Leon Aroozoo’s The Punkhawala and the Prostitute (Singapore: Epigram Books 2024) as well as Timothy P. Barnard’s edited volume entitled Singaporean Creatures: Histories of Humans and Other Animals in the Garden City (2024, NUS Press). Both texts have stirred conversation on how animals should be included within its narrative history of Singapore.

An innovative innovation this year was the introduction of a Translation category, open to books published in English translated into Singaporean by citizens or permanent residents living here. This marked a departure from previous years where translated works were eligible under other categories – like when comic artist Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye won 2016 English Fiction prize!

AI Singapore recently unveiled the Online Safety Prize Challenge with the goal of furthering artificial intelligence research on online safety and encouraging safer interactions worldwide, particularly regions with limited data on harmful memes. The prize will fund multimodal, multilingual, and zero-shot models to identify and understand malicious content more quickly – click here for more info!