Scholarships
One of the hallmarks of Philip Yeo has been his passion in developing people. In the course of his career he has sent thousands of Singaporeans to top universities around the world on government funded scholarships. In return for government funding to complete their studies in university, these scholars make a commitment to return and serve the Singapore government for a period of six years.
When Yeo joined the EDB in 1986, EDB had a few MNCs who had donated annual scholarships: Sundstrand-EDB Scholarship(1982); Minebea (1985). Some of the key scholarship programs that Yeo set up at EDB include: Seiko Epson (1987–1988), Yokogawa Electric (1988), Shimano (1993), Daicel Chemicals (1994) and Siemens (1995); Mobil (now ExxonMobil) (1997), Singapore Inc (SIS) (1997) and Promising Local Enterprise Scholarship (1996).
In 1989, Sir Paul Girolami, then Chairman of Glaxo, asked Yeo what Glaxo could do to demonstrate its appreciation to Singapore. Yeo immediately suggested a scholarship program. Shortly after that meeting, Glaxo sent S$50 million in two cash cheques to the EDB resulting in the creation of the Glaxo-EDB scholarship program. Since its launch in1990, the Glaxo-EDB scholarship has trained over 300 BS/MSc scholars.
When Yeo arrived at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in 2001, he found that fewer than 20% of PhD holders in A*STAR's institutes were Singaporean, and few among them were young scientists. Yeo immediately set up his boldest scholarship yet by setting up the A*STAR Graduate Academy to implement the plan to train up 1,000 PhD scholars that would eventually return to Singapore and undertake research in fields like information technology, engineering, molecular biology, biochemistry and medicine. One of the hallmarks of Yeo's personal style is the amount of personal attention he gives to his scholars. He takes great pains to remember personal details about their background and also closely tracks their academic performance. He regularly meets with them to buy them meals whenever he is near their overseas universities on his regular business trips abroad.
Read more about this topic: Philip Yeo