3 Polytechnic Student Teams Lauded for Passion to Serve the Community with the IES Design Awards

OTHER, Singapore - July 21, 2014 - PRLog -- A personal rehabilitation mobile app, a versatile walking frame and a nifty medication scheduler emerged as top winners after an intense competition amongst all five polytechnics and two Institute of Technical Education (ITE) colleges which submitted a total of 18 projects

Daring to challenge conventions and passionate about serving the community, three teams from local polytechnics won the coveted IES Design Awards 2014 for their ingenious engineering innovations. Mr. Heng Swee Keat, Minister for Education today presented the Gold Award to Temasek Polytechnic, the Silver Award to Ngee Ann Polytechnic and the Bronze Award to Nanyang Polytechnic at the National Engineers Day (NED) 2014 opening ceremony at NUS University Town.

Launched by IES in 2001, the IES Design Awards aims to motivate youths to recognise the needs of the elderly and the disabled and leverage on their engineering knowledge to create and design practical, user-friendly solutions to enhance their quality of life. Participating teams have to cap their expenditure at $2,000 and demonstrate competence in the optimal use of materials and equipment. Opened for the first time to students from ITE, the IES Design Awards 2014 received a total of 18 project submissions which were assessed by five judges from academia and industry.

The 2014 Gold Award goes to Yang ShuangHe and Jia YiXin from Temasek Polytechnic for the “Mobile Body Balance Coaching Application”; the Silver Award goes to Tang Boon Ting, Siow Shu Yi, Wong Jin Wei and Cheong Yi Jie Louis from Ngee Ann Polytechnic for the “Adjustable Walking Frame”; and the Bronze Award goes to Glenn Chee Jun Yuan from Nanyang Polytechnic for the “NFC+ Elderly Medical Assistant System”.

Concerned about patients who have difficulty in maintaining their balance, Gold Award winners, ShuangHe and YiXin, focused their project on devising an Android application that detects if a patient is standing upright or swaying. By building data capturing, data analysis, exercise programme recommendation and cloud-based technologies into the app, the students have provided an intelligent companion for both the patient and his or her physiotherapist in the rehabilitation process. The “Mobile Body Balance Coaching Application” is the first smart phone application to garner a Gold Award in the IES Design Awards.

“An engineering job is unique because it gives the society an unending stream of goodness and the engineer himself or herself a sense of satisfaction that few professions may know. Through the IES Design Awards, IES hopes to let students experience the power of engineering in solving real life problems and relish the joy of putting a smile on someone’s face with their solutions,” said Er. Chong Kee Sen, President, IES. “This year’s high quality entries serve as a clear validation of our young engineering students’ creative talent, persistence and enthusiasm to make a difference.  We congratulate the winners and all the participating teams for doing such an excellent job and hope that all of them will be motivated to become engineers and deliver more benefits to our society.”

“The students participating in IES Design Awards have never failed to astonish us with their ardour, energy and creativity. This year, we are especially impressed with the winning teams’ ability to think, plan and execute holistically.  The gold winning team, for example, showed that, despite their young age, they are able to complete an entire process of research, conceptualisation, fabrication and field testing, to develop a highly practical and relevant solution,” said Mr Au Yeong Hoh Wai, Chief Judge, IES Design Awards.