In 2005, the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine marked its Centennial Year, which was underlined with a gift of S$100 million from the Yong Loo Lin Trust. In honour and recognition of this transformational act of philanthropy, the School was re-named the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

The gift enabled the School to realise its goal of strengthening its clinical research work and linking this more closely to the education and training of medical and nursing students. This was done through the development of two key areas, namely infrastructure and the NUS Medicine talent base.

There was significant upgrading of physical infrastructure and facilities. An example is the Centre for Translational Medicine, the School’s flagship building featuring state-of-the-art research and teaching facilities, and which is home to some of the most competitive research programmes. A portion of the gift was also channelled into developing the School’s talent base by providing the faculty resources to pursue work that would advance medical care.