As competition among the world’s leading ports intensifies, ports must become not only bigger and faster, but also smarter, more resilient and more sustainable. Singapore’s ability to stay ahead depends on how well it plans, models and optimises increasingly complex port systems. At the Centre of Excellence in Modelling and Simulation for Next Generation Ports (C4NGP) at the College of Design and Engineering at NUS research in digital twins, simulation and decision-support tools is helping shape the future of Singapore’s port ecosystem. Working closely with government agencies and industry partners, C4NGP supports evidence-based planning across port design, operations, resilience and sustainability, contributing to initiatives such as Singapore’s Maritime Digital Twin and long-term low-carbon port development. Learn how research and innovation are helping prepare Singapore’s ports for the future.

A team of researchers from the North China Electric Power University and the National Institute of Metrology in China has published a perspective on a promising class of materials for extracting uranium from aqueous environments. Their work details the design and application of heterocyclic-linked covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which use light to perform this critical task. This approach holds significant potential for both cleaning up contaminated water sources and securing a sustainable supply of uranium, the primary fuel for nuclear energy, by extracting it from seawater.

The dual need for environmental remediation and resource security has spurred the development of new technologies for uranium capture. Traditional methods face challenges with selectivity and capacity. The authors explain that photocatalysis offers a distinct advantage by using light to trigger specific redox reactions, reducing soluble and mobile uranium (U(VI)) into insoluble and immobile forms (U(IV)). The success of this technique depends on creating highly efficient photocatalysts. The focus of this perspective is on COFs, which are crystalline, porous materials built from organic molecules linked by strong covalent bonds.

Researchers at KAIST have demonstrated a chip-scale photonic approach for generating ultralow-noise and highly stable microwave and millimeter-wave signals based on optical frequency combs (microcombs), offering a potential pathway toward compact, high-performance frequency sources for next-generation technologies.

High-frequency signals in the tens to hundreds of gigahertz range are essential for emerging applications such as 6G communications, radar, and precision sensing. However, achieving both low noise and high stability at these frequencies remains a fundamental challenge for conventional electronic signal sources.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - April 29, 2026. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have introduced Bioinspired123D, a generative AI system that translates plain-English design descriptions into executable 3D geometries inspired by biological materials, from crab exoskeletons to horse hoof walls. The work, published in AI for Science, shows that controllable, high-fidelity 3D generation for scientific design does not require massive 3D foundation models.

Developed by graduate student Rachel K. Luu and Professor Markus J. Buehler in MIT's Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), the system departs from mainstream text-to-3D methods that rely on meshes, voxels, or point clouds. Instead, Bioinspired123D generates compact Blender Python scripts — programs that, when executed, produce parametric, smooth, and fabricable structures. This "code-as-geometry" representation makes the resulting designs interpretable, editable, and ready for downstream simulation or 3D printing.

"Biological materials encode an extraordinary amount of design intelligence in their geometry - helicoidal plies in stomatopod clubs, gradient porosity in horse hooves, cellular cores in bird beaks," said Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT and senior author of the paper. "We wanted to build a system that can take that intuition, expressed in natural language, and turn it directly into structures you can fabricate, without needing a supercomputer to do it."

Recently, the archaeometry team from University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with National Center for Archaeology, Key Laboratory of Archaeological Sciences and Cultural Heritage, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, utilized paleoproteomic technology to reveal that the feather decoration unearthed from Tomb No. 1 at Wuwangdun (Tomb of King Kaolie of Chu) of the late Warring States period (the late 3rd century BCE) were crafted from the feathers of multiple bird species, and that the used animal glue originated from the extinct short-horned water buffalo (Bubalus mephistopheles). This research not only fills the gap in the scientific analysis of archaeological feather remains in China but also extends the known survival time of the short-horned water buffalo by at least 700 years. The related findings were published in Science Bulletin entitled "Proteomic characterization of feather decorations and extinct buffalo glue during early Iron Age China".

Biomimetic Strategy Simultaneously Enhances Output, Mechanical Strength, and Transparency; Extended to Wearable Motion Recognition Sensor Combined with Machine Learning

For more than a decade, a fundamental mystery has surrounded graphene—the one-atom-thick “wonder material” known for its exceptional strength, conductivity, and transparency. Despite its seemingly simple structure, one basic question has remained unresolved: does graphene attract water, or repel it?

The answer has proven surprisingly elusive. In some experiments, water droplets bead up on graphene, suggesting a hydrophobic (water-repellent) surface. In others, water spreads out, implying hydrophilic (water-attracting) behavior. This contradiction has fueled a long-running scientific debate and created uncertainty for applications such as desalination membranes, hydrogen fuel cells, and nanoelectronic devices, where precise control of water at interfaces is essential.

A research team led by Director CHO Minhaeng and Professor Stefan RINGE at the Center for Molecular Spectroscopy and Dynamics within the Institute for Basic Science, in collaboration with Korea University, has now resolved this puzzle. Using machine-learning–enhanced molecular simulations, the researchers demonstrate that pristine graphene is intrinsically hydrophobic and microscopically not wetting transparent.

Researchers at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, in collaboration with Tokyo University of Science and University of Calgary, have developed a method to experimentally separate and quantify proton transport at individual interfaces in ultrathin ionomer films. The study was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on May 1, 2026.