The innovations of five engineering students were recognized with four awards in the Hong Kong ICT Awards 2013 recently. The students formed into two teams and each team received two awards. Details of their awards are as follows:

Awards:
Best Innovation & Research Award (College & Undergraduates) – Bronze Award
Best Innovation & Research Award (College & Undergraduates) – Special Mention (Social Responsibility)

Students:
A team formed by Andreas Widy (UG, Electronic and Computer Engineering) and Adrian Hei Chit Yuen (UG, Computer Science and Engineering), supervised by Prof Tim Woo

Entry:
Telemetric Suit in Robotics Control
Implemented with a 3D viewing system, the specially designed robot can be remotely controlled in extreme conditions, such as a highly radioactive environment and under water. The telemetric suit and 3D goggles provide robot operators with first-hand experience and intuitive control of the robot. The judging panel believes that it possesses “a high potential for commercialization.”

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Awards:
Best Innovation & Research Award (College & Undergraduates) – Special Mention
Best Innovation & Research Award (College & Undergraduates) – Special Mention (Commercial Value)

Students:
A team formed by Jerry Chun Yin Chu, Victor Yuk Cheung Lee, and Lap Hin Wong (all from Dual Degree Program in Technology & Management, majoring in Computer Science), supervised by Prof Gary Chan

Entry:
Stock-mesh: A Cross-platform Real-time Mobile Stock Quote Streaming Application
Stock-mesh is a cross-platform mobile stock quote streaming application. By applying the cutting-edge streaming technology developed by HKUST, Stock-mesh achieves sub-second delays between server and client, bringing faster, more accurate stock quote data to smart-phone users. Stock-mesh supports iOS, Android and Windows Phone, and provides a myriad of functions including stock search, portfolio, price notification and financial news to its users.

Stock-mesh is powered by Streamphony, a streaming software suite developed by the Multimedia Technology Research Center of HKUST. The sub-stream model, optimized-push mechanism and other innovative designs of Streamphony makes it capable of supporting large-scale live multimedia streaming over public Internet with minimal delays and costs. With Streamphony, Stock-mesh is able to minimize the delays caused by the traditional pull-based data delivery and bandwidth limits, hence realizing real-time stock quote streaming in mobile phones.

Sharing from the team:
“As Dual Degree students, we think the competition bestowed on us a chance to demonstrate our technical skills as well as our presentation skills. Apart from developing the mobile application, we were required to devise a business plan for our software and present our idea to the judges in a business format. The competition was a precious experience which allowed us to put both our engineering skills and business knowledge in use. “Further, in the exposition, we had the chance to learn from the innovative entries of other candidates and listen to feedbacks from judges and audience, which conferred insights and fruits for thinking on us. Overall, the competition is an edifying and rewarding experience.”

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About HKICT Awards and Best Innovation & Research Award
Established in 2006 under a collaborative effort amongst the industry, the academia and the Government, the Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology (HKICT) Awards aim at building a large-scale and internationally recognized branding of ICT awards of Hong Kong by recognizing, promoting and commending the excellent achievements to which Hong Kong ICT professionals and organizations contribute. The Awards also encourage local practitioners to develop innovative and creative ICT solutions, which will uplift the image of Hong Kong ICT sectors, both locally and internationally.

As one of the ten categories of the HKICT Awards, Best Innovation and Research Award is an award to encourage outstanding ICT talents to devote themselves in innovative technology by recognizing young talents and incubating their passion and commitment in technology. Internet Professional Association (iProA) is the leading organizer of this award in the past 6 years. Through participation in the award and the exposition, students and researchers got the precious chances to learn from each other. It provides good opportunity and platform for people to exchange thoughts and stimulate more innovative and research ideas.