Dr Jonathan Pan, Chief (Disruptive Technologies Office) at HTX, recently spent a Saturday at a Tech For Good event with young innovators who are creating assistive technology solutions for persons with disabilities.
Organised by non-profit organisation Engineering Good, the fourth annual Tech For Good innovation festival saw close to 1,000 people attend the event on Oct. 1 and showcased innovative projects from 30 youth teams working on solutions to problems faced by six disability groups.
Dr Pan presented the “Most Resilient” Award to Team Sapphire comprising a group of five Secondary three students from Bowen Secondary School. The award is given to the team with the tenacity to work on their problem statement and develop an impactful solution.
Making assistive tech more accessible
For their prototype – a social communication bot for the Movement of Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) – Team Sapphire developed a communicative tool that a person with intellectual disabilities can comfortably rant or communicate with. Their prototype seeks to solve the problem statement of how to enable persons with intellectual disabilities to practice and inculcate socially appropriate interactions.
“It was great seeing and feeling the passion of the youths with their impactful and innovative ideas to help people with disabilities and how they are driven to create solutions to benefit the community,” Dr Pan said.
He explained that Assistive Technology is an interesting technology domain where there are dual use opportunities to apply such solutions to Home Team officers in their operational environment. An example is when an operating environment turns harsh resulting in induced disabilities like prohibiting sight. Such assistive technology could then be applied to render assistance to these officers.
Chief (Disruptive Technologies Office) Dr Jonathan Pan (extreme left) with members of Team Sapphire, which won the Most Resilient Award at the Tech For Good 2022 innovation festival on Oct. 1, 2022. (Photo: Engineering Good)
“The ‘Most Resilient’ category resonates with me deeply as I recall my own personal experiences of getting up from repeated failures and pressing on,” Dr Pan said. One of his memorable projects was working on a solution early in his career as a systems architect to deal with the complexity of system integration. Back then, there were limited commercially available solutions that dealt with such complexity, he added.
“The ‘eureka’ moment came to me when I was having a swim after having toiled on the problem for a long time and experiencing multiple failed attempts,” he said. “That solution was developed and successfully deployed for operational use.”
At HTX, Dr Pan currently leads a team of researchers who are exploring the frontiers of science and technology, including Computational Forensics and Quantum technologies. He is also actively involved in research work in the intersection of cybersecurity and AI.
Dr Pan will mentor Team Sapphire and will also host a “Meet the Industry Leaders” session for youth innovators at HTX later this year.
Partnering on using tech for good
In July, HTX partnered with Engineering Good for the HTX Annual Cycle 2022 to raise funds for the charity as part of HTX’s corporate social responsibility initiatives.
"Engineering Good is very grateful for the collaboration with HTX,” said Mr Patrick Hee, Executive Director of Engineering Good. “Since the partnership started, HTX staff have cycled enough distance to go 1.5 times around the earth’s circumference as part of their fundraiser and raised over S$50,000 to our shared cause of using technology for good, for the societal good.”
Read related article: HTX Annual Cycle 2022: Exceeding Expectations Together