EU-Startups Podcast

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In this conversation, we sit down with Gary Ang, Professor of Practice in Defence Innovation & Applications at NUS Enterprise and a senior representative of the Strategic & Defence Technology horizontal, to explore dual-use innovation and the growing Europe–Singapore DefenceTech partnership.

Having worked across defence, government, investing and now university innovation, Gary offers a distinctive perspective on why good defence technology so often struggles to move from R&D into real-world use. He unpacks what "dual-use" really means at a time when the label has become a major theme in Europe - what makes a technology genuinely valuable across both civilian and defence markets, rather than simply being marketed as such.

We explore the strongest opportunities for Europe and Singapore to work together as Europe puts renewed attention on defence innovation, while Singapore has long taken a deeply integrated approach across technology, government and industry.

For European DefenceTech founders looking at Asia, Gary explains what they need to understand about Singapore as a partner, a market and a gateway to the wider region.

We also discuss how founders should build companies when their technologies are increasingly shaped by national security, export controls and strategic competition, what NUS must do to turn promising defence research into companies that attract capital and scale internationally — and what Europe and Singapore can each learn from the other's approach to procurement and scaling.

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In this conversation, we sit down with Professor Helmut Schönenberger, co-founder and CEO of UnternehmerTUM and VP Entrepreneurship at the Technical University of Munich, to explore what Europe and Singapore can learn from each other on university venture building and DeepTech talent.

UnternehmerTUM has become one of Europe's best-known university startup ecosystems in its own right, and Prof. Schönenberger shares the hard-won lessons from two decades of turning strong academic research into companies that can actually scale.

Having built that engine in Munich, he offers a direct comparison with Singapore - where the biggest differences lie in how universities support founders and commercialise DeepTech, and what each side does better.

We dig into one of Europe's most persistent puzzles: world-class research that struggles to produce companies of comparable scale. Prof Schönenberger explains what he believes is still missing between the lab and the global market, and what European ecosystems could adopt from Singapore's skill at connecting universities, government, investors and industry.

Just as importantly, he flips the question - what could Singapore and other Asian innovation hubs learn from Europe's strengths in engineering, industrial technology and long-term research?

Finally, we discuss how European universities should compete for increasingly global DeepTech talent while building stronger bridges with Asia, and the role universities and innovation centres should play in helping European deep-tech companies expand into Asian markets.

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In this conversation, we sit down with Professor Benjamin Tee, Vice President (Ecosystem Building) at NUSX, for a look inside the university's lab-to-market engine and NUS's push to build globally competitive DeepTech spin-outs.

Prof. Tee has lived both sides of this world: as a researcher pushing new technologies forward - including years developing electronic skin and sensors that give machines a sense of touch - and as a founder trying to turn those ideas into companies. He shares what entrepreneurship taught him that academia couldn't, and how he decides whether breakthrough research should stay in the lab or has the potential to become a real company.

With physical AI drawing increasing attention as AI moves into robotics and the physical world, Prof. Tee explains where the biggest opportunities lie over the next few years - and what working so close to the research frontier has taught him about how long DeepTech really takes to reach the market.

Finally, we discuss what typically stops university spin-outs from reaching global scale, and what is still left to be done in the Singaporean innovation ecosystem.

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Babak Parviz, DeepTech inventor and entrepreneur, best known as one of the founders of Google Glass and later as a leader of major innovation initiatives at Amazon. Today he leads NewDays.ai, a startup applying AI to dementia and cognitive care.

Dr. Parviz shares what pulled him toward dementia after a career spanning some of the most iconic consumer technology projects of the past two decades - and why he felt this was a problem worth building his next company around.

We talk about what NewDays is trying to make better for patients and families, and where AI can genuinely help today in one of healthcare's most human challenges.

We explore why Europe and Asia - both dealing with ageing populations at scale - may become the most important testing grounds for new models of dementia care, and what a small company can do in healthcare that a tech giant sometimes cannot.

Finally, we discuss whether Europe's more cautious approach to health data and AI regulation slows innovation or can actually help build better, more trusted products - and how AI's growing capabilities could change the way we detect, manage, and even think about dementia over the next five to ten years.

Filmed at the A5X Conference, Singapore - This interview forms part of a wider series we filmed in collaboration with NUSX, who invited us to Singapore to speak with founders, investors and academics from across the globe about shared challenges, the developing bridge between Europe and Asia, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Orna Berry, Technical Director at Google Cloud and former Chief Scientist of Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade, whose career spans national R&D policy, venture capital, cybersecurity, cloud and AI.

We explore the themes from her A5X panel sessions: AI, systems and DeepTech for national innovation, and talent supply chains for AI, biotech and quantum.

She shares what her different roles have taught her about what actually makes an innovation ecosystem work, and what separates countries that successfully turn scientific strength into economic impact from those that struggle to move beyond the lab.

Dr. Berry explains where she sees the biggest bottlenecks today, what "the talent supply chain" really means, and whether countries can realistically build highly specialised expertise in AI, BioTech and quantum themselves, or whether the strongest ecosystems will depend on attracting global talent.

Finally, having watched several major technology waves over her career, she offers her view on this AI wave — and what Europe can to do to turn its research strength into globally competitive DeepTech companies.