The Engineering Science Programme (ESP) was launched in April 2006 as a flagship educational initiative from the faculties of Engineering and Science at NUS. The main mission of ESP is to prepare students for careers in Research and Development in industry and academia. The programme aims at combining strong science fundamentals with cutting-edge engineering applications, so that ESP graduates can effectively contribute to solving the many complex multi-disciplinary challenges of our time, such as problems in communication, transportation, energy production, health, security, and environment.

Historically, many innovations and inventions have come from scientists and engineers crossing disciplinary boundaries. For example, Archimedes of Syracuse was a great mathematician, physicist and engineer of ancient times, and his legacy of inventions and discoveries transcended any one discipline of study. Another example is Galileo, the great Renaissance Italian physicist, who had a passionate interest in mechanical engineering and the making of scientific instruments. ESP prepares graduates to work at this interface between science and engineering. Graduates will be able to conduct basic scientific research and develop discoveries into marketable products.

Despite its young age, ESP is one of the earliest engineering programmes to be awarded a full accreditation by the Engineering Accreditation Board under the outcome-based accreditation assessment. At the end of 2016, we successively went through another round of international accreditation, which will take us through to 2021. The international recognition of the programme has led ESP to be one of the founding members of the International Engineering Science Consortium (IESC). The other members are University of California Berkeley, University of Toronto, KTH Sweden, Osaka University and University College London that have long-established and well-known engineering science programmes.

ESP academic staff are pooled from the departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Physics. They bring with them a wide range of research experiences and passion for teaching and mentoring engineering science students. The early ESP associates, who were hired as young assistant professors, have now been promoted to associate professors and professors with tenure under rigorous evaluation criteria.