A digital innovation project designed by an IUB alumnus-led team to promote the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for Covid-19 detection has won the Technovation Prize at the 2022 SDG Open Hack! Bangkok. The team, called “ShiatsuOne”, led by IUB EEE alumnus Navid Bin Ahmed, has also won the Beautiful Life Championship award at the competition for displaying strategic scalability and long-term business plan. 

The competition was organized in hybrid mode from July 1-3, 2022 from Bangkok, Thailand by Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand; Swiss non-profit Open Geneva; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR); and the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Team leader Navid, who got his BSC and MSC degrees in Electronic and Electrical Engineering (EEE) from IUB in 2016 and 2019 respectively, is joining GroundUP.AI in Singapore as an Embedded Firmware Engineer this month. 

The other members of the team are: Aiman Lameesa and Supasin Jiraprakobchai from AIT; and Nafia Islam Faria from Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP). They will now get scholarships and incubation facilities to continue research and development at the laboratory of AIT.

“We got the award for coming up with the most sustainable digital innovation as a potential solution to the global healthcare crisis. We demonstrated how an Artificial Intelligence-assisted electronic device can help replace the conventional RT-PCR tests and X-ray for detecting Covid-19 and Pneumonia remotely which can benefit at least 100,000 people everyday globally,” said Navid.

“Our plan is to commercialize this product. We want to reach out to the global tech experts and funders to develop at least 10 prototypes and follow a rigorous quality check. Then we want to partner with a Bangladesh company to see if we can go for mass production,” Navid added.

Earlier this year, United People Global named Navid a Global Sustainability Leader for 2022 for his continuous commitment and effort to promote Sustainable Development Goals.

BDST: 2356 HRS, JULY 4, 2022
MSK