Dr Kevin Yuen (Director of I-WELL; Associate Professor of SEC), Dr Anna Kam (Affiliated Researcher of I-WELL; Associate Professor of SEC), and Dr Kean Poon (Assistant Professor of SEC) were awarded three honour prizes and special awards, one gold medal, and two silver medals at the International Invention Innovation Competition in Canada (iCAN) 2020.
Dr Yuen was awarded with the Top 20 Best Invention Awards, gold medal and special prize. His brand-new computerised testing system investigates young children's speech recognition in noisy environments. The system helps understand and tackle children's listening and learning difficulties.
“It is the first study of its kind in the Chinese-speaking community. Apart from Mandarin, we’d like to see the testing system be developed into other languages, such as Cantonese and Taiwanese,” said Dr Yuen.
Dr Anna Kam and Dr Kean Poon received the Best Woman Inventor Award, silver medal, and special prize.
Dr Kam developed a tablet-based screening system that enables preschoolers' hearing and listening to be checked without needing to visit a medical clinic. The test incorporates games to help children stay focused and increase the test's accuracy.
“The listening-in-noise test isn't usually included in routine hearing tests. But by making the test more accessible, we can detect auditory processing problems in children earlier. These problems may be a contributing factor to dyslexia,” Dr Kam said.
Working memory holds and manipulates information for cognitive tasks in daily life. It plays an important role in concentration and in following instructions. Dr Poon’s app helps to train the working memories of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disabilities (RD). It is the first such app to use linguistic stimulus, such as high frequency words and rhymes.
“Research shows that students with ADHD and RD have a very limited working memory. But after a five-weeks with the app students showed significant improvement in literacy skills, phonological and visual-spatial working memory.” Dr Poon said. ‘We hope our app can help students to receive training at a very low cost.”
iCAN is organised by the Toronto International Society of Innovation and Advanced Skills, and supported by Innovation Initiative Co-operative Inc., International Federation of Inventors’ Associations and World Invention Intellectual Property Associations. It engages innovators from all over the world.
As the iCAN award illustrates, FEHD encourages innovative research that enhance the well-being of children. By integrating new technologies into the special education field, we strive to take our research impact to the NEXT LEVEL.
