The team “PiCode” formed by MPhil student Wenjian Huang, Electronic and Computer Engineering, and three undergraduate students (one from the HKUST Business School and two from CUHK Business School) won the HKSTPC Technopreneur Gold Award at the YDC E-Challenge 2014. This award is sponsored by the Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTPC) and recognizes the team’s innovative use of technology in the development of a modern business model.

The winning project “PiCode” is a novel picture 2D barcode technology which can hide information in images and can be scanned by mobile phones. It is similar to a QR Code but it provides an impressive picture-like appearance which can attract users to scan it. It uses novel and advanced technologies, including imperceptible waveform modulation and machine learning based demodulation.

“At the beginning, our team only wanted to promote our technology through the competition. But during the competition, we learned a lot on how to turn theory into application and get interested in future entrepreneurship,” said Wenjian, who is supervised by Prof Wai Ho Mow. He joined HKUST since his undergraduate years where he carried out his final year project with Prof Mow and after that began his MPhil studies with him. His MPhil research topic is on communications over display-camera channels. “In future, I plan to continue develop and promote our technology and try to find some useful applications,” he added. In addition to the Technopreneur Award, he also made to the top 10 among 7276 teams in the Alibaba Data Discovery & Machine Learning Competition in 2014 and received the Best Mobile App Award at ACM MobiCom 2013.

Organized by the Young Entrepreneurs Development Council (YDC), YDC E-Challenge 2014 is a business plan competition to showcase Hong Kong’s entrepreneurial talents in a rapidly evolving technology and knowledge based society. It is open to full-time students of local universities and other tertiary institutes. The competition comprises a series of workshops to develop the core competencies of future entrepreneurs, networking events that provide a platform for students to meet potential investors, mentorship programs for students to seek advice and guidance, and business showcase for students to present their business plans and compete for prizes and recognition from judges of different industries.