Tanoto Foundation and Tsinghua University Education Foundation have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Beijing, heralding a greater level of strategic cooperation in the medical field, including the setting up of the first-ever bilateral medical scholarship between National University of Singapore (NUS) and China's Tsinghua University.

The MoU covers three key programmes including the bilateral scholarship programme between NUS and Tsinghua, the Tanoto Foundation Chair Professorship, and the Tanoto Foundation Clinician-Investigator Award tied to the Centre for Physician Scientist Development at Tsinghua. Across all programmes, the collaboration will focus on talent development and training, as well as medical research, development, and application.

Under the bilateral scholarship between NUS and Tsinghua, two students from each university will undertake various medical and health related courses in exchange, offered respectively at the Tsinghua University School of Medicine and NUS, under both the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and the Duke-NUS Medical School. To be conducted over four years with four students each year, Tanoto Foundation will contribute a total of S$320,000 to the programme, with the money going into supporting tuition fees, accommodation, travel and other expenses.

The Tanoto Foundation Chair Professorship is an endowment programme that will fund leading professors in the development of medical research in areas of joint interest between Tanoto Foundation and Tsinghua University School of Medicine. Potentially, these include gastroenterology, cardiology, neurodegenerative diseases and clinical immunology.