Prof Li Jia, Associate Professor of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (left4); President S. Joe Qin (left 5); Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research) (right 4); Prof Paulina Wong Pui-yun, Head and Associate Professor (Presidential Early Career Scholar) of the Science Unit (right 3); Dr Nicole Lee Man-ying, Associate Programme Director of Office of Service-Learning and Lingnan Entrepreneurship Initiative (right 2).
Lingnan University’s debut at Silicon Valley International Invention Festival wins record 14 awards and becomes Hong Kong’s top winner.
Lingnan University's science and innovation teams have achieved outstanding results at the 11th Silicon Valley International Invention Festival 2025 (SVIIF) in their first-ever participation. All 13 participating projects, covering areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), smart manufacturing, and intelligent transportation, won awards, including 8 gold and 5 silver medals. One of the projects, the AI-based Fencing Training and Assessment System, led by Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), also received a special award ⸺ Prize of the International Federation of Inventors’ Association (IFIA), making Lingnan the Hong Kong higher education institution that won the highest number of total awards and gold medals at this year’s festival.
Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science of Lingnan University, who led the delegation to the Invention Festival, was delighted with the outstanding achievements of Lingnan University. He said, “The fact that Lingnan has won multiple awards in its first participation in the festival reflects the international recognition of our scholars’ high-quality research and demonstrates the University's strength in knowledge and technology transfer. This latest success builds on our world No.1 ranking in ‘SDG 4: Quality Education’ under the THE Impact Rankings, and follows our strong showing at the International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva in April, where Lingnan captured five awards. These milestones affirm Lingnan’s growing competitiveness in research and innovation on the global stage. We are committed to becoming a leading liberal arts research university in the digital era, and will continue to fully support our researchers in their pursuit of scientific breakthroughs. Going forward, we will also actively promote industry-academia-research collaboration to maximise the University’s positive impact on society.”
The 13 inventions exhibited here were in smart manufacturing, intelligent transportation, software games, energy and environmental protection, and humanitarian technology, demonstrating conclusively Lingnan University’s strength in innovative scientific research, and its contributions to society.
Gold Award-winning projects include Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research), with the AI-based Fencing Training and Assessment System; Prof Paulina Wong Pui-yun, Head and Associate Professor (Presidential Early Career Scholar) of the Science Unit, with Smarter Traffic, Safer Roads: AIoT and Real-Time GeoAI Innovations for Urban Transport; Prof Li Jia, Associate Professor of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, with The Intelligent Integrated Carbon Tracking Dogs and Carbon Removal Robots Deployment System; Prof Pan Fei, Assistant Professor of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, with Buffered Whisper Transformer: A Real-time Speech Recognition System for Edge Devices via a Dynamic Audio Chunking Mechanism; Dr Zhi Shaohua, Senior Lecturer of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, with An AI Multi-modal and Multi-level Process and Cost Intelligent Analysis Tool for Intelligent Manufacturing, and Lightweight Network Hard Drive Developed for People with Disabilities; Prof Albert Ko, Director of the Office of Service-Learning and the Lingnan Entrepreneurship Initiative (LEI), with CREW- Wheelchair Control System; and Prof Albert Ko and Mr Adrian Lo Chun-kwong, Product Design Lead of the Office of Service-Learning, with PureAura – the Portable Mini Energy-saving Air Purifier.
Silver Award-winning projects include Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science, with Systems and Methods for Dynamic Process Monitoring with Time Series Generative Principal Predictor Models; Prof Pan Fei, Assistant Professor of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, with Give Choices Back to the User: Personalised Movie Recommendation Software with User-Selectable Algorithms and Dynamic Hybrid Optimisation, and Intelligent Comment Filtering: A Natural Language Processing-Based Method (NLP) for Negative Review Prediction; Dr Zhi Shaohua, Senior Lecturer of the School of the Interdisciplinary Studies, with Destiny Compass: AI-Powered Cross-Dimensional Love Matching Ecosystem — Where Ancient Wisdom Meets AI-Driven Soul Alignment; and the research team of the Office of Service-Learning, with Incuvia - Modular portable foldable affordable baby incubator.
The SVIIF is a festival that showcases the most advanced inventions from around the world annually to potential investors, companies, and industry leaders in the heart of Silicon Valley, a global centre of technological innovation. This year, more than 215 inventions by over 400 inventors from approximately 25 countries and regions were exhibited; its grand scale attracting worldwide attention.
