A team of students from Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School won the Imagine Cup Junior with devised imaginative and practical AI solutions.
HONG KONG, 13 September 2022 – A Hong Kong team is among the 10 winners of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup Junior Global AI for Good Challenge, which saw thousands of students aged 13 to 18 around the world propose AI-driven solutions to major global challenges.
The Hong Kong-based winner, AutoCrab, is a four-person team of 16-year-old students from Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School (YLMASS). They designed and developed an AI solution to monitor and regulate water quality in hairy crab aquafarms. Inspirations were drawn during their experience tour at a farm in Yuen Long. The ultimate goal was to strengthen consumers’ confidence in the food safety of locally-grown hairy crabs, by improving their habitat and minimizing their ingestion of pollutants. The team has adopted Microsoft Azure Cloud platform to back up and encrypt data, ensuring the initiative meets privacy, business and regulatory compliance requirements.
“We are proud to see a team from Hong Kong emerge as a winner in this worldwide contest for meaningful AI innovation,” said Cally Chan, General Manager of Microsoft Hong Kong and Macau. “Digital skillset has become an essential skill same as other languages. We believe Hong Kong students have great potential in this field and will continue to grow and shine both locally and internationally. Microsoft Hong Kong is committed to nurturing talent through various AI education programs and setting up AI Inno Lab for local schools which helps K-12 schools strengthen their AI teaching capabilities. With the right resources and education, we are certain that Hong Kong students will become a pillar of our society and technological future.”
Mr. Yau Chi Leung, Principal and Ms. Wong Fung Ming, Vice Principal of Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School revealed, “Today, we are thrilled to see the AutoCrab team and the teachers who had contributed their time and efforts winning this international recognition. It marks one of our milestones in embracing digital-first culture in the school and solving social challenges for our neighborhood. YLMASS as the Microsoft x AiTLE ‘AI for Social Good’ School, opened our Microsoft AI Innovation Lab in November 2021 with the mission to empower students to understand and make use of technologies to support the surrounding community to tackle challenges they are facing and bring social impact.”
The AutoCrab team has started physical implementation at their school to bring their concept to life. As one of the “AI4Good” Schools with Microsoft AI Innovation Lab, they fully utilize Microsoft Surface devices, Microsoft 365 and Azure cloud platform to enhance the teaching and learning experience across humanities and STEM classes, which also bring easy accessibility and equip students with sought-after digital skillsets and foster a digital-first mindset from students’ school age.
Photos 1-3: The AutoCrab Team implementing the solution at Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School campus; the data of the habitat will be shown on the dashboard
Microsoft Education team supports secondary schools in Hong Kong in planning and building up their AI Innovation Labs by providing all-rounded resources and consultation services to help schools turn the classroom into an immersive learning space using the Microsoft AI solutions and Education framework. The team also supports schools through the digital transformation processes and helps them to incorporate its Microsoft 365 hybrid teaching and learning solutions, Azure cloud platforms, devices and learning and professional certification resources into teaching programs.
Photos 4 – 5: Microsoft AI Inno Lab at Yuen Long Merchants Association Secondary School
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