Asian Scientist is an English language science and technology magazine published in Singapore.
History and profile
Asian Scientist was launched in March 2011 by Asian Scientist Publishing Pte Ltd (now known as Wildtype Media Group Pte Ltd).
Based in Singapore, Asian Scientist is maintained by a team of professional science and medical journalists, with active contributors from the science, technology and medical communities.
The magazine's launch reflects the growing demographic of scientists, engineers and doctors from Asia, and caters to this community with news stories that are both timely and of interest to them. According to the 2010 U.S. National Science Foundation Key Science and Engineering Indicators report, one-quarter of the world's publications are from Asia and one-third of all scientific researchers worldwide are Asian, representing a shift of the world's scientific center of gravity to Asia.
According to the Science and Engineering Indicators 2012 released by the U.S. National Science Board, the largest global science and technology gains in recent years occurred in the "Asia-10″ – China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. Between 1999 and 2009, for example, the U.S. share of global R&D dropped from 38 to 31 percent, whereas Asia's share grew from 24 to 35 percent during that period.
On April 16, 2013, the company accepted seed funding from international science publisher World Scientific Publishing Company to expand operations at its Singapore headquarters. In January 2014, it launched its flagship print magazine targeted at scientists, healthcare professionals and students. The magazine's inaugural issue focused on the biomedical sciences and was featured by media outlets in Singapore and Malaysia as Asia's first science magazine.
On April 2, 2015, it launched the inaugural Asian Scientist Writing Prize, co-organized with Science Centre Singapore and with prizes sponsored by World Scientific Publishing Company. The competition received close to 400 entries and gave out SGD$21,000 in cash and prizes. The competition returned for its second installment in 2017, this time with Dr. Jorge Cham of Piled Higher and Deeper as its invited guest speaker.
In August 2015, it published a book called Singapore's Scientific Pioneers, with the goal of highlighting the contributions of 25 pioneering scientists from Singapore. The book was made possible by a Singapore50 Celebration Fund grant from the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.
At the start of 2017, the company launched Supercomputing Asia, a new biannual print title dedicated to tracking the latest developments in high performance computing across the region and making supercomputing accessible to the layman.
On May 4, 2018, the company was relaunched as Wildtype Media Group, a STEM-focused media company spanning digital, print, custom publishing and events. It works with academic and industry media partners in Asia on their communication strategies with key stakeholders and the public.
Content
The magazine covers science, medical and technology news updates from the Asia and Australasia regions. It devotes categories to research and development, health, medicine, new media and education. The site has been indexed by Google News since July 22, 2011.
Notable coverage
The magazine regularly features peer-reviewed basic and applied research from Asia, and carries out one-on-one interviews with notable Asian scientists. Prominent interviewees include: