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Swinburne Sarawak dominates innovation competition

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Participants of Innovate Sarawak 2021.

KUCHING: Team Swinburne Sarawak dominated and was crowned champion in all tracks in the recent Innovate Sarawak 2021 competition.

Innovate Sarawak, a platform for young Sarawakian talents to demonstrate innovative solutions, is coordinated by the Sarawak Digital Economy Corporation (SDEC) and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Research (MESTR).

There were 61 teams in total, ranging from third to final year students, including groups from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), Swinburne University, and Curtin University.

This competition has three tracks: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Mobile and Web, with a total prize money of RM1,500 for all categories.

Through the competition, students can present their ideas and tackle real-world problems faced daily by utilising electronic, mechanical, and software/mobile/cloud app solutions/technologies to deliver solutions via the application.

“We are proud of the achievements of our undergraduates who participated at the national-level competition,” said SDEC chief executive officer Sudarnoto Osman.

“Even if you did not make it to the finals, we believe you will benefit greatly from this competition. Your project today might be the start of a more complete innovation process tomorrow. So, keep innovating.”

The team presented by Swinburne University–comprising Lilian Siaw Yung Ping, Kong Hao Qing, and Yeong Kah Ho–won the Artificial Intelligence (AI) track with their project titled ‘Computer-aided Drug Discovery of AAK1 and GAK Dual-target Inhibitors to Stop SARS-CoV-2 Viral Entry into Host Cells’.

The students, who were guided by Dr Xavier Chee Wezen, constructed a Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) algorithm to identify potential drugs that could block the entry of coronavirus into human cells.

Swinburne Sarawak teams also won first and third place in the Mobile and Web competition.

Isaac Asante won first place, with his project titled ‘Development of a Low Budget Covid-19 Self-Quarantine Monitoring System’.

Under the supervision of Assoc Prof Dr Lau Bee Theng, the team created a platform called Trackia, a fool-proof Covid-19 quarantine monitoring system that includes a location-tracking native Android application, a web application that serves as an administrative dashboard, and third-party analytics tools.

Meanwhile, students Toh Kah Hie, Elwin Chan Kok Wei, and Malika Arjun Liyanage received third place for their project, ‘A Web-based Learning and Development Platform for Employee Engagement and Performance’.

Under the supervision of Dr Brian Loh Chung Siong and Dr Vong Wan Tze, the students developed a platform based on industry requirements which allows human resource managers to monitor employee learning progress while allowing employees to improve their professional skills, knowledge, and experience within their organisation.

Albe Chai Bing Zhe won the IoT track with his project, ‘Health Monitoring System of Tomato Plant using Image Recognition and Machine Learning’, on which he was supervised by Assoc Prof Dr Chua Hong Siang.

With object detection and classification models, this was presented as an IoT solution to assist farmers in monitoring environmental parameters and predicting the health state of tomato plants.

Aside from winning the competition, participants competed for a chance to win the competition’s subsidiary award, the Excellence Award, for which Team Swinburne Sarawak, which won the AI track, was named as the winner, taking home RM1,000.

Innovate Sarawak is a part of Innovate Malaysia, Malaysia’s largest design competition available to all Malaysian undergraduate students in their final year, in which all nine teams will participate at the national-level challenge in August.

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