The Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (SCELSE) is a unique interdisciplinary Research Centre of Excellence (RCE), working to harness microbial community-driven processes for environmental sustainability such as degradation of harmful pollutants, self-purification of urban surface water, recycling used water and minimising environmental health risks.

SCELSE offers a research environment focusing on scientific excellence, recognising world-class research as the platform for future innovation, research and development. We are currently building our research strength in environmental life sciences engineering and seeks to nurture research talent and foster future leaders in this emerging field.

Uniqueness: The SCELSE Graduate Program leverages on expertise and graduate courses from Singapore's leading universities – Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS). Students enter into either NTU or NUS, follow a common graduate program and graduate with a degree from either university.

Participants in SCELSE's Graduate Program can register for selected courses from either university and undertake a core component (SCELSE Summer Course), in addition to research projects associated with their elected fields of study, with access to complementary research capabilities from both universities. This creats opportunities for interactive and multi-disciplinary research by combining both emerging and core scientific disciplines such as:

• Microbiology
• Ecology
• Chemistry
• Genomics
• Engineering
• Materials Science
• Microfluids
• Bioimaging
• Biophysics
• Computational and systems biology

Research conducted by graduate students at molecular, cellular, community and process levels, will explore, understand and manage biofilm-driven processes. Advances in the ecology of microbial biofilm communities resulting from these projects will help deliver novel solutions applicable in a range of industrial, environmental and medical settings.

SCELSE creates opportunities for an interactive and multi-disciplinary research environment to address complex problems and scientific challenges by combining both emerging and core scientific disciplines such as but not limited to the following:

Research projects are available for incoming students in the following areas that cut across different cluster activities in SCELSE. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of these projects, their allocation to students and the supervision format is not PI-driven. Instead projects within these topics are custom designed after discussions with the students and advisory team allocated accordingly.

ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

• Effect of physiochemical and operational parameters on structure and activity of microbial communities in water treatment systems
• Enhanced electroconductivity of complex microbial communities for effective bioremediation of environmental pollutants
• Resilience of microbial biofilm communities for river ecosystem function
• Functional dynamics and modeling of biofilms in used water treatment

META-'OMICS AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY

• Systems biology of highly diverse microbial communities in the urban water cycle
• Meta-transcriptomics of microbial communities in environmental engineered bioprocess systems
• Metabolomics of environmental biofilm communities
• Next generation sequencing of microbial biofilms

MICROBIAL BIOFILMS

• Gradients and functionality of the extracellular matrix of bacterial biofilms
• Understanding the biofilm life cycle using defined mixed species experimental systems
• High resolution sensing and imaging to explore gradients and signaling in microbial biofilm communities
• Role of phage and predators in shaping and controlling complex biofilm communities

PUBLIC HEALTH

• Chemical biology for developing environmentally friendly biofilm control agents
• Novel in vivo models for prevention and dispersal of pathogenic biofilms
• Mechanism of resilience against stress and predation by the biofilm shield
• Concealed and resistant microbial pathogens in the environment