#shiningwithoutboundaries

PhD student Gin GUATON from Environmental Science, Policy and Management (ESPM) participated in the ASPIRE League Student Workshop 2022 from 4th to the 7th of July 2022 and won the first prize for best project proposal with his team with the focus on System Design for Connected Care.

The event was hosted online by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) with the theme “Post Pandemic: Technologies for Sustainable Living”. The ASPIRE Forum consists of a Student Workshop, a Symposium, and a meeting by Vice Presidents from member universities including the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST, Hong Kong SAR), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), Tsinghua University (China), and KAIST (Korea). PG students from different member universities formed mixed teams and each team was tasked with the preparation of a presentation on a particular topic under the theme.

Gin worked with Katherine Po Sin CHUNG (KAIST) and Liangxuan ZHAO (Tsinghua University) and proposed a project that aims to utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) in providing predictive, preventive, and affordable care for kids, with a focus on 2–5-year-old Cantonese children who may have Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The Covid-19 pandemic limited children’s mobility as they are identified to be vulnerable and highly at-risk from the virus. Their proposed project wants to bridge this mobility and care gap by providing an AI-powered mobile app that connects parents, kids, speech therapists, and government offices to help ensure that no child is left behind, especially those with DLD. They hope to develop the idea further and turn it into a usable innovative app.

The team won 1st Prize for their presentation on the topic. They proposed an all-in-one language education solution for young kids with difficult in expressing themselves and this tool will allow experts and parents to detect the genetic issue, relating to language and expression, of the kids.

One of the judges, Prof. King L. CHOW, Acting Dean of Students of HKUST,  encouraged all participants to see the importance of people and society in the policy implementation and commented that the success of the event proved that collaboration between people would not be limited by geographical distance restrictions.

A 5-day online workshop: ASPIRE League Undergraduate Engineering Design Challenge 2022 (UEDC 2022) was also held for undergraduate students from member universities to learn the basics of design thinking. Yasiru FERNANDO, a Year 2 student from Dual Degree Program in Technology & Management (T&M-DDP) was selected to take part in the workshop and exchanged new ideas on design thinking with students from other member universities. The workshop also included lectures on Japanese culture, including an introduction to "Noh," one of Japan's most popular traditional performing arts.