CUHK
News Centre

Sixteen teams from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have recently swept up eighteen awards in the “Challenge Cup” National Competition Hong Kong Regional Final – Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition 2018. CUHK also received the highest number of awards amongst the participating tertiary institutions. These included two first-class awards and two Innovation Awards in the Innovation category and one first-class award in the Entrepreneurship category.

The “Challenge Cup” National Competition Hong Kong Regional Final was organised by the Hong Kong New Generation Cultural Association. More than 560 students from 19 tertiary institutions with 188 projects took part. The winning teams in the Entrepreneurship category will represent Hong Kong at the biennial “Chuang Qing Chun” National Entrepreneurship Competition 2018 to be held in Hangzhou this November.

Innovation category

The “An Efficient Assessment Tool for Child Speech Disorders Based on Intelligent Speech Technology” project by two students from the Department of Electronic Engineering, NG Si Ioi and JIANG Yi, won a first-class award in Information Technology and the Innovation Award. This is a collaboration project between the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery of the Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Electronic Engineering. They aim to develop a user-friendly mobile application which can help parents identify speech sound disorders in children. The two students are now building an algorithm that can analyse and transcribe a set of Cantonese speech sounds and point out error patterns, based on speech recognition, machine learning and sound data.

Another project winning the Innovation Award and also a second-class award in Life Sciences was “Capillarized Myocardium Biochips for Personalised Therapeutic” developed by Bruce Pang, a PhD student from the School of Biomedical Sciences, and OOI Hon Son, a graduate student from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Personalised medicine will be the next paradigm for health care and future stem cell technology, allowing us to fabricate organs or tissues suitable for implantation. In this project, the two students have combined soft lithography technology developed in engineering fields, a novel cell patterning method and hydrogel fabrication to create microscale structures in biomaterials. They were also able to control the patterning of stem cells down to 50um resolutions. Through a series of chemical inductions, they successfully directed the stem cells to become cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle tissue. They believe that the possibility will open up for this hydrogel myocardium biochip to be used in shortening the time for heart disease drug discovery and reduce the risks of human drug screening, and even in heart transplantation in regenerative medicine.

Entrepreneurship category

In Hong Kong, over 70% of the elderly suffer from one or more chronic illnesses and require medicine daily. However, some of them may skip doses or are “non-compliant” with their prescription drugs orders because of poor memory or vision problems. LI Cheuk-man Chapmann, a student from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, found his grandparents suffer from this problem. Therefore, he and his teammates have set up a “Simplify Tech” team and designed an all-in-one pill management system “Treasure”. “Treasure” provides proper storage and automatic dispensing for up to 10 types of pills. It can also input the dosage and frequency of medication by scanning information on prescription bags and give a reminder to patients. Furthermore, the logbook function records dosage and treatments that the patient has received, and also links with smart biometric devices to obtain valuable diagnostic information, which could help doctors’ diagnosis and tracking of treatment progress. This project has been given a first-class award in Entrepreneurship Proposal and will represent Hong Kong in the “Chuang Qing Chun” National Entrepreneurship Competition 2018 to be held in Hangzhou in November.

List of CUHK awarded projects: