Up to half of the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise or Create will be filled with faculty, post-doctorate researchers and doctoral students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The rest will be from NUS, the Nanyang Technological University and top researchers from the region.

They will be able to draw from a $1-billion fund from the Singapore government.

National Research Foundation Chariman Dr Tony Tan announced the new campus at the opening of the fifth international symposium of nano-manufacturing on Wednesday.

Speaking to an audience of over 300 participants, mainly scientists from Singapore and MIT, Dr Tan outlined MIT's track record, Dr Tan said: 'If the companies founded by MIT graduates and faulty formed an independent nation, the revenues produced by the companies would make the nation the 24th largest economy in the world.'

Some 4,000 MIT-related companies employ 1.1 million people and have annual world sales of US$232 (S$335 billion).

Dr Tan cited MIT as an example to illustrate the impact and contribution that research universities can bring to the economy.

He pointed out that 64 members of MIT have won the Nobel prize, proving that 'use-inspired research does not compromise the quality of scientific research', he said.

There's been a ten-year engagement period between MIT, the National Research Foundation and the Education Ministry (MOE), when the Singapore-MIT Alliance enabled long-distance education and research collaborations to be carried out.

The first entity of its new campus, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (Smart) Centre was launched on Wednesday.

MOE plans to match dollar-for-dollar gifts and donations to Smart for the establishment of Singapore Research Professorships.

They will be held by senior MIT faculty or scientists who are actively involved with the Smart Centre reseach programmes in Singapore.

Smart's director, Professor Thomas Magnanti said: 'With our success so far, we have moved from an incubation period, into a mature alliance. We plan on working together for at least another 20 years.'

The setting up of a campus here is MIT's largest international commitment.

Five inter-disciplinary research groups that have up to a dozen senior scientists from MIT will be formed by 2010, when the campus is ready. It will focus on work that research that cannot be conducted at MIT.

Professor Manenti estimates it will cost up to US$40 million for the five labs every year.