NYP Wins Three Silvers and Seven Other Awards at Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors' Competition

Jean (left) and Di Sheng received their silver award for their “mPresenter” invention from Professor Su Guaning, President of Nanyang Technological University.

A simple, yet ingenious key guide, which makes sliding of keys into doors an easy process.  A nifty mobile presenter which turns your mobile phone into a slideshow presentation tool.  These are two examples of projects from Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) which clinched Silver awards at the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors’ Competition 2011.

This year, NYP won a total of three Silvers, three Merit and four Commendation Awards.  These awards are for the Senior Student, Open and Defence Science Sections.  The Silver awards are the top awards given out and NYP has clinched three out of the six Silver awards.

Zhi Liang (left) and Wei Keong with their ingenious "Key Guide".

One of the winning awards, called the “Key Guide,” went to Kee Wei Keong and Wu Zhi Liang.  The idea of a key guide came from third-year Diploma in Manufacturing student, Wei Keong.  Wei Keong, who lives with his grandmother, observed that she has difficulty opening the front door of his home.  Hence, he developed the notion of having a key guide which could help grandma and other elderly folks like her.

This glow-in-the-dark key guide can be attached above a key hole so that users can easily slide their key into the lock to open their door.  Said Wei Keong, “This guide would be useful not just for the elderly, but also the visually impaired, or simply anyone who has difficulty with keyholes.”

Another silver award went to Diploma in Multimedia & Infocomm Technology graduates Jean Tan Zhiye and Lee Di Sheng for their invention, the Mobile Presenter or mPresenter.  The duo’s invention is a phone application which can be used for presentation slideshows.  Users can check on presentation notes, click to specific slides or even highlight any part of the slides.

Said Jean, “I attended many lectures and like to sit at the back of the lecture theatre.  There, I observed that the lecturers tend to stay at the front of the class and near their laptops, as they are limited in movement by their laptops and notes.  With this new invention, they will be able to move around more easily and can become better presenters.”  Jean’s lecturers have tried out their invention during actual lectures, and response has been very positive.

Phyu Hpone Mo Khant, Chin Soo Wen, and Zhao Dong won a silver award for their invention, "Blissy".

The third NYP project to receive a Silver Award is ‘Blissy’.  This project, which uses a novel and efficient Blissymbols entry method for a computing system, is the brainchild of Zhao Dong, Phyu Hpone Mo Khant and Chin Soo Wen from Diploma of Electronics, Computer & Communications Engineering.  This new entry method enhances the speed of composing Blissymbols sentences by ten times more than conventional tools and methods.  This will benefit various groups of users, mainly speech and language therapists and disabled.

Held since 1986, the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors’ Award aims to stimulate creativity and innovation among Singapore’s youths.  This year’s event attracted 1,059 entries, and 65 were honoured with awards.

The annual event is organised by the Tan Kah Kee Foundation, A*STAR and the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) with the support the Science Centre Singapore.

Many congrats to team NYP!