25-04-2025
How Space Faculty's Lynette Tan is shaping the future of youth innovation in Singapore
Space Faculty's next frontier is robotics. Tan speaks with enthusiasm about the transformative power of robotics, highlighting how advancements in artificial intelligence collaborative robots and Autonomous Mobile Robots are helping address labour shortages and open new career pathways to solve complex issues such as climate change. She stresses that as these technologies advance, a strong talent pool is essential to support the sector and drive Singapore's future economy.
For Tan, building such talent starts with inspiring youths—an effort that is highlighted by Space Faculty's recent success in securing the bid to host the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) finals in Singapore in November 2025. 'This is like the Olympics of the robotics world for youths, which is expected to bring together over 4,000 of the brightest young robotics talents to Singapore, from around the world,' says Tan. Co-located with Expand Space, the WRO finals will not only bring together young robotics talents from across the globe, but also attract young professionals and industry experts, bolstering Singapore's status as an innovation hub.
On a personal level, Tan is eager to embrace new challenges. This outlook is partly inspired by a life-threatening health scare in 2018, when she was diagnosed with necrotising fasciitis. 'I escaped unscathed but scarred,' she says, reflecting on the rare disease. 'One in three people don't survive.'
Despite her ordeal, she believes that the narrative of greatness doesn't have to be built on a foundation of hardship. The ordinary individual—someone who may not have a grand story of resilience—deserves to know that they, too, can achieve remarkable things. 'I want people to feel that they can do great things even without [hardships] in their lives. I'm really glad I survived. It's why I do these 'strange and peculiar things',' she reflects, referring to her relentless pursuit of new challenges in space, deep tech and robotics. It is this drive to live fully that she hopes to instil in Singapore's next generation of innovators.
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