Officials from the Ministry of Education and international invention competition winners from the past two years give a thumbs-up to celebrate their results Oct. 4 in Taipei City. (Courtesy of MOE)
 

The Ministry of Education held a ceremony Oct. 4 in Taipei City to honor 60 students who won gold medals for Taiwan at 13 international invention competitions over the past two years.

According to the MOE, the students took home 215 top prizes from competitions in Croatia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand and Ukraine. Such strong results reflect the youths’ ingenuity and will inspire more students to create ways to improve quality of life, the ministry added.

Among the winners, Chen Po-yun from Chaoyang University of Technology in the central city of Taichung took the top honor at the 2022 International Invention, Innovation & Technology Exhibition Malaysia with an AIoT-assisted device that screens and sorts fresh produce. This device will help traditional firms speed up their automation and has great business potential, the ministry said.

Equally impressive is a smart wearable gadget that improves inner ear capillary blood circulation to enhance hearing. It was developed by a team led by Kuo Tsung-ter, an associate professor from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Yuanpei University of Medical Technology in the northern city of Hsinchu.

The device, which won gold at the International Salon of Inventions and New Technologies held Sept. 22-24, 2022, in Ukraine, has been used in a clinical trial at Taipei Veterans General Hospital for nearly one year with very positive feedback, the MOE said. (SFC-E)