 I'd like to welcome on stage Ted Meng, the CEO of the Science Center of Singapore. A very important member of this science community. And so as CEO of the Science Center and Vice Dean of NUS, Ted Meng, Lim Ted Meng, promotes STEM as an engine for knowledge-based innovation, engages in stakeholders to share the mission and champion the creative science communications. So his goal is to inspire the youth and to see STEM as a powerful means to create their own future. So science is to be shared openly. The mission of the Science Center is about science communication, with the purpose of opening the minds with evidence-based information. Ted Meng will give a reflection on how CSC started supporting FOSAsia and brought benefits to this community. So Ted Meng. Thank you for the introduction. I stood up because I wanted to cut. I know your tea break is coming up. And it's okay. I will keep your tea break because I haven't got any slides. No. Okay. In fact, when I was sitting there, I was just roaming through my mind. How can I condense what I'm going to say so that won't into your tea break? Well, first of all, I want to thank Mario and Humphuk for inviting me, especially on your 10th anniversary of FOSAsia. And I came here, first of all, to congratulate and also to congratulate the team for putting in this effort, sharing the same conviction and commitment to come in to do this year after year. And if you saw all the slides earlier, you must have come across Science Center. I think it was 25, 36, 27 that FOSAsia was hosted at the Science Center. Now, when I was first introduced, I was impressed, first of all, by the motivation behind. And also, it was a timely thing because the whole idea of digital transformation, although it was not used yet at that point in time in 2015, Singapore now is really engaged during all the public service division to move on to digitalization, digital transformation, and so on and so forth. So in a way, Science Center, as Science Center should be, is always looking forward to the horizon of what could be. And then I also realized that this FOSAsia is actually a network of experts, a network of people, some people really very formal, some people put on hats all the time, and some people come in in a very crazy fashion, and some people come in, they talk about technology which was beyond many of us. But we all know that the digital technology will be transformational in terms of how impact on our world. And Science Center is very happy, was very happy, and is still happy to be part of this movement. And I was just looking at the FOSAs, right? And I'm a scientist, and Science Center is to be shared openly. And that's why when I was told that it's an open source kind of thing, I said it fit our ethos. That's the whole purpose of Science Center, we want to open up science to as many people as possible to open their minds, to let them see the impact of science and how without science, probably there would be technology. I mean, you can argue with me later whether you agree on that. To me, science is the foundation for what we call knowledge-based economy. Because of science, we understand scientific phenomenon, and from there we derive application and technology. That's my view. As a Science Center, I must put science in front first. And when we look at science in the past, science is in a way locked up in the ivory towers, and it's only for the learned. For the learned, and sometimes the scientists may look down on people who don't understand science. You are illiterate, you don't understand what I'm talking about, and scientists like to publish papers in journals that only their peers understand. If I were to throw you a biomedical paper, you would say, what's it all about? It's not the concern for them to communicate openly. It's more of showing off how much I know that you do not know. And a peer review is just to up one another, and then in competition our purpose is to suppress your paper because I know I'm going to do a big tool before you publish. I mean, all these are the so-called not open but closed competition. And now with the explosion of a platform to share information freely in all kinds of social network, internet, and the famous Dr. Google or Mr. Google, it's important that science is now really open as truthful as possible and also as transparent as possible. Otherwise, if science is only manipulated and monopolised by so-called experts, science is not doing what science should be. It's to benefit the whole of mankind. And we are talking about sustainable development goals. We talk about climate change. We are talking about science as evidence-based. And it's very important to have this openness. Otherwise, you can get pseudoscience, you can get fake news. You can even use science as a political tool to twist and turn things around. So, therefore, I was impressed with this openness. And therefore, when I was asked whether we could host, I said yes. I mean, one thing good about being a CEO, I just make the decision. And because I did tell the Minister for Education long time ago when he invited me to take on this role and borrowed from the university. I didn't ask about this job. I should ask this question. Where is my boundary? They couldn't tell me. I just pushed the boundary until they slapped me. I was slapped a few times. And this is something that I think I almost got slapped because what is this, you know? Especially, we bring in international people coming in. But anyway, we have very fruitful three years. Very exciting three years. And in the three years, we have joy and agony because Science Centre is not really a conducive place for this kind of gathering because we have our public's gallery and so on and so forth. But it was a good experiment. And then later, we had to discuss with Hong-Fuk and Mario that how can we sustain this? And that's when our good friends, Leibang University, the institution came in because soon after that, we started to work closely with LLI and LLI started to come into the scene for education to really educate our public about the future of work, skills, future and so on and so forth. And literacy in terms of coding, in terms of tech is very important. So we became the matchmaker. And this is the second time we are running in LLI. And this brings me to the next part that is the word F-free. I don't know how you think that word free. Do you think the word free for granted? And we all know that whatever organization of events and so on and so forth, nothing is free. Somebody got to pay for something. And at the Science Centre, we always believe in doing good and doing well. My staff always complained to me, why are you talking about we have to bring in revenue? Aren't we a government agency? Government should fund us. But I told them, you know that government will not fund you forever and ever and the government will expect you to be standing on your own feet somehow. It won't be 100% funding. And therefore I told our people that in some things that we do, we can go free, but in certain things we need to recover costs. Otherwise, how can we grow? So I'm very impressed by the business model. So I'm learning. I'm trying to learn how to force Asia. I look at the registration fee. It's actually very, very cheap. I got a ticket and so on and so forth. So it is an interesting model and I also told this back to you. When you say free, what does it mean? Somebody got to pay for the venue. Somebody got to pay for the food. Somebody got to pay for something. So how free is free? So this balancing do good and do well is something that we as a learning institution, as a Science Centre, that's a mission-driven institution that's not for profit. We are also trying to learn. What do you mean by free? So I really want to learn from you. If you have something interesting to share with me, I'll be very happy to really, what the Chinese say, I call you sifu. I'll call you the master. Teach me how to do free at the same time, do good, do well. I think this is something that all organizations are struggling. And finally, I also want to open to all the experts here because one good thing about being involved in the force Asia, we also understand how we can use technology to do hackathon and also use technology to do special offerings and work processes and engagement in the Science Centre. So last year, we hosted the hackathon to ask our people, can you cover the solutions? Look at Science Centre in 2030. And if you can come in with the solutions, you are also embarking on a worldwide journey because the whole world is asking the Science Centre, is it relevant? We don't want to go to Science Centre to see a certain science demonstration. Now YouTube can tell you everything. And all the information are now freely available. In the past, Science Centres are so-called authority of scientific facts and know-how. But now, the visitors coming to Science Centre probably know more than you do. So how do we reinvent the Science Centre? What is Science Centre version 2.0? And also from Singapore's perspective, in line with the digital transformation, we are looking at how to use smart technology to make seamless journey before the visitors come in during the journey in the Science Centre and after leaving the Science Centre, what kind of engagement, what kind of platform, what kind of learning tool and so on and so forth. So in the hackathon, we had very interesting students who came up with projects and we were going to embark on a journey with them to see how we could help Science Centre transform it. Some of them could be free, some of them may turn out to be something very interesting that you can actually act as a consultant to move towards other Science Centre. So I want to freely open the invite to you that if you think that Science Centre did help Force Asia grow in Singapore and you want to give back to the Science Centre and then indirectly giving back to live-long institutions because we tap on them to do events with them. You know where to contact me. If you do not know where to contact me, follow Hong Fu and Mario. They are very good in making the initial contact and then how by the communication and conversation we struck off, I think it's remarkable that over the past years we have grown to a good understanding. There is mutual trust and respect and also openly telling them the agony we had on the word free, what in by free. So I throw that back to you and maybe later if you have some answers or you're going to share with me your perspective of free, I'll be what I call, I wash my ears to listen to you and under Chinese Proverbs. I wash my ears to listen to you because I really want to learn from you. So with that, I want to just end off by saying once again congratulations and Open Science, Open Mind is indeed very important and because they opened my mind to what the tech world is and we began to see a lot of possibilities otherwise untapped. Thank you very much.