Taiwan Education Fair News
The National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) Glocal Digital Service & Innovation Competition, a hackathon spanning 40 consecutive hours, was concluded last weekend. Finic, a team comprising four students from NYCU and one from National Central University, won the championship.
Finic is composed of five Indonesian students (i.e., AlbertBudi Christian, Muhammad FebrianArdiansyah, Steven Jonathan, Felix Liawi, and Irfandi Djailani) from Graduate Institute of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, NYCU; Department of Computer Science, NYCU; and Department of Business Administration, National Central University. of the team designed a LINE-based health care service similar to the official LINE chatbot of Taiwan Centers for Disease Control, providing functions such as searching for nearby hospitals, tracking medical records, QR Code scanning, and online medical consultation.
Moreover, a Panic Button was integrated with mobile positioning for users to receive immediate help from nearby LINE users, thereby overcoming the predicament of failing to obtain help from emergency calls to 119 due to language barriers. Demonstrating Taiwanese people’s virtue of helping others in the service is key to Finic’s success in winning the championship (service introduction video: https://reurl.cc/1YOxX9).
Fully conducted in English, the competition was NYCU’s first creative hackathon involving domestic and international students. Participants of the competition came from Haiti, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Saint Lucia, Thailand, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Honduras and Taiwan, who were studying in NYCU, National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, National Taiwan Normal University, National Chengchi University, and National Central University. The competition attracted more than 100 participants, who were allowed to express their creativity to the fullest.
The competition was held entirely online due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants combined the chatbot provided by LINE with open data to brainstorm creative ideas on topics such as digital transformation and health care. Co-organized by LINE and DeepQ, the competition aimed to integrate students’ creativity with the industry to generate values. In addition, winning students were granted an priority to attend interview for internship program.
Kuan-Neng Chen, President for International Affairs of NYCU (Chiao Tung Campus), stated that the competition received generous sponsorship from Delta Electronics, Micron Technology, and the Spring Foundation of NCTU. Specifically, the Spring Foundation of NCTU kindly set up a Spring Foundation Innovation Award to honor three teams outside of the top three winners of the competition. Winners of the innovation award each received NT$10,000 for their boldness and innovativeness, which align with NCTU alumni’s bravery for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Mong-Hwa Chin, Vice President for International Affairs of NYCU (Chiao Tung Campus), also remarked on the success of the competition, which is a great encouragement to campus internationalization. Considering that NYCU is characterized by internationalization, more professional activities will be organized to develop students’ international vision and competency.
Jill Chen, UX/UI Manager at DeepQ, claimed that health care has always been a topic of concern for DeepQ. The company strives to offer a positive user experience by exploring users’ needs and providing adequate solutions to users’ problems.
By sharing experience with students at workshops, DeepQ provided them with guidance to identify user-reported problems, come up with solutions, and practice teamwork to amplify collaborative efforts, all of which contributing to the creation of optimal solutions. DeepQ witnessed students’ ability to rapidly organize and propose solutions during the competition as well as received their affirmation on the company’s efforts to enhance health care in the event of a pandemic.
The R&D engineering team of LINE Taiwan expressed appreciation for the rare opportunity to co-organize an international hackathon with NYCU during the pandemic. Through interacting with students during university–industry cooperation, the company aims to stimulate students’ creative ideas as well as recruit for LINE TECH FRESH internship program, thereby reducing the distance between people.
Chi-Ming Peng, a meteorologist and CEO of WeatherRisk Explore Inc., was invite to the competition to share experience in Taiwan’s application of big data and open data. The three-day competition enabled students to interact with and understand leading companies in the industry. In addition to a hall of inspiration for the pursuit of truth and thoughts, NYCU also serves as an outpost for industry–academia connection.
★Official event website: https://event.oia.nycu.edu.tw/
Contributor National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University