In addition to participating in the HKMU Hackathon, HKMU students have also taken their innovative technology projects beyond the University. Despite it being only the second year in which our students got invited to participate in Hong Kong Techathon+, a team was selected among 250 competing teams to receive a Merit Award. Formed by five students from the School of Science and Technology — Joseph James Gutierrez, Pooja Zenit Shah, Maria Dharshini Anthony Jesu Ashok Savitha, Ashwin- Sundarn and Fu Yuhao — along with three members from other universities, the team Bit-time proposed a wheelchair add-on device called StairMaster to contest the Smart Cities category of the Local Student Group. The device combines the power of soft robotics, energy harvesting and a health monitoring system to offer a cost-effective and energy-efficient solution to a common challenge faced by wheelchair users, namely navigating the stairs.
In the highly competitive Disney Imaginations Hong Kong Design Competition 2024, which attracted 100 participating teams from Hong Kong and the rest of the Greater Bay Area, an HKMU team made it to the final six. This year's competition drew attention to the issues of sustainability, conservation and inclusion. In response, the HKMU team, composed of Kenny Lambert Fung, Chan Chunwai, Lau Siu-chun and Lam Man-hei from the Computing and Interactive Entertainment programme, drew on their expertise to develop an augmented reality game called Walled Past. In the game, visitors are invited to venture into the Kowloon Walled City to find missing memory fragments and bring memorable items to a designated room to set the walled city free.
Following the previous year's success, the University held another Employers' Luncheon on 22 November 2023, gathering 80 employer representatives from sectors including accounting, architecture, healthcare, hospitality and information technology. On the occasion, the University made the exciting announcement that it will participate in the Innovation and Technology Commission's STEM Internship Scheme next summer as the first self-financing university to do so, bringing 2,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in related disciplines opportunities to be placed in innovation and technology companies for internships.
