Mr Suresh Sachi

Deputy Chief Executive (Corporate)
General Counsel
A*STAR

Mr Suresh Sachi joined A*STAR in April 2002. He is a qualified lawyer, admitted to practise law by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Singapore, and is also a qualified Singapore patent agent.

As the Deputy Chief Executive, he oversees the corporate services divisions of A*STAR and its research entities in performing the functions of Corporate Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation, Enterprise Risk Management, Finance, Health Safety, Facilities and Administration, Human Resources, Information Systems & Technology, and Legal. His role is to ensure that the Corporate Group provides client-centric services to support A*STAR’s R&D operations and that A*STAR’s resources are deployed in an efficient manner.

Mr Sachi concurrently serves as A*STAR’s General Counsel, taking charge of all legal and intellectual property (IP) matters. He is responsible for establishing, implementing and maintaining A*STAR’s legal, IP, legal risk management and compliance policies.

Before joining A*STAR, Mr Sachi was in private legal practice in a leading law firm where he was a partner in the Technology and Intellectual Property Department. He has represented many public and private organisations, including A*STAR Research Institutes, local and foreign institutes of higher learning and has significant experience working with multi-national corporations, public listed companies, small and medium enterprises as well as hi-tech start-ups.

Mr Sachi spearheaded a number of national efforts to coordinate and streamline legal and IP terms across Singapore’s public agencies, including the Public Sector Master Research Collaboration Agreement (MRCA), bringing together all public sector agencies engaged in R&D in a single research collaboration agreement; the Master Clinical Trials Agreement across all public sector trial centres; streamlining and aligning public sector RIE grant terms and conditions and establishing a National IP Protocol for Singapore.

Mr Sachi has served on a number of national committees, including the Committee on the Future Economy, the IP Hub Steering Committee, the Intellectual Capital Working Group, Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) Mentorship Funding Scheme Committee and the IP Working Group.

He currently serves on the boards of the Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation Singapore (CRIS) and IPOS International, having served for 9 years on the Board of IPOS. He also serves on the board of the A*STAR Research Entities that houses all the A*STAR research institutes and research entities. He was a former member of the board of governors of and an advisor to the IP Academy. Mr Sachi is a founding member and past president of the Licensing Executives Society (LES) Singapore. He served for more than 10 years on the Ethics Committee of the Singapore Eye Research Institute and is currently a member of the SingHealth Centralised Institutional Review Board and the Data Protection Appeals Panel.

As a specialist in intellectual property and technology transfer, Mr Sachi is a frequent speaker at the Global Forum on Intellectual Property and other forums by the World Intellectual Property Organisation, LES Singapore, the IP Academy, and the Law Society of Singapore. He is an active coach and trainer in the IP landscape in Singapore. He was named in the 2020 IAM 300 magazine as one of the World’s Leading IP Strategists (IAM 300).

Mr Sachi holds an LLB from the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore and attended the Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD, Fontainebleau in 2016.