SGInnovate Announces Dr Lim Jui As New CEO

20 March 2020, Singapore: SGInnovate announced today that its Board has appointed Dr Lim Jui as the company's Chief Executive Officer, effective 1 May 2020. He will be taking the helm from Steve Leonard, who will be concluding his term as Founding CEO.

Dr Lim has more than 20 years of experience in innovation, research commercialisation and investment. He joins SGInnovate from NTUitive, a subsidiary under the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) charged with the mandate to commercialise research and to build a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Prior to his role at NTUitive, he was the co-founder and Executive Director of the Medical Engineering Research and Commercialisation Initiative (MERCI,) a medical device accelerator, at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Concurrently, he was also the inaugural Programme Director of the Singapore-Stanford Biodesign Programme (SSB), a joint venture between the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), and Stanford University.

In 2006, Dr Lim joined Merlin MD as its CEO. The medical device company was developing a novel intracranial stent for the treatment of cerebral aneurysms. During his tenure, he planned and executed pre-clinical trials and international multi-centre clinical trials that led to market approval for the device in Europe.

Dr Lim received his Bachelor of Arts (BA, Biological Sciences and East Asian Studies) and Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Columbia University, and obtained his M. Med (Anaesthesia) from NUS. He was a practising physician before he joined Bio*One Capital, a dedicated biomedical sciences investment management company under EDB, in 2000. His last role at Bio*One Capital was that of Director of Investments. Dr Lim remains a registered medical practitioner.

“I am fortunate to have experienced commercialisation through multiple lenses as an investor, startup CEO, and most recently, seeing through early-stage technology commercialisation. I hope to bring this experience to bear at SGInnovate. I intend to build upon the very considerable successes of SGInnovate by focusing on the Deep Tech sector in which Singapore has established competitive advantage and thought leadership, but which remains relatively underfunded. Deep Tech startups need more tangible support than others,” said Dr Lim.   

SGInnovate is committed to the mission of helping entrepreneurial scientists build and scale Deep Tech startups. Having achieved success since its inception in 2016, it sees itself continuing to work closely with a wide range of partners and co-investors to support entrepreneurial scientists through equity-based investments, access to talent and business-building advice.

Yong Ying-I, Chairman, SGInnovate said, “The Board and management are confident that given Jui’s experience in commercialising research and bringing new technologies to international markets, under his leadership, SGInnovate will be able to continue its good work in building and strengthening the Deep Tech ecosystem in Singapore.”

About SGInnovate

At SGInnovate, we build and scale Deep Tech startups into high potential companies with global impact. We believe that hard global problems can be solved using Deep Tech, and Singapore, where we are based, is uniquely positioned to realise Deep Tech innovations that can tackle these challenges. Our Deep Tech Nexus Strategy is focused on adding tangible value to the Deep Tech startup ecosystem in two key areas – development of Human Capital and deployment of Investment Capital. With the support of our partners and co-investors, we back entrepreneurial scientists through equity-based investments, access to talent and business-building advice. Our efforts are prioritised around emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Tech, MedTech and Quantum Tech, which represent impactful and scalable answers to global challenges.

SGInnovate is a private-limited company wholly owned by the Singapore Government. For more information, please visit www.sginnovate.com.

Media contacts

Grace Chiang
SGInnovate
[email protected]