2024 S.T. Yau Science Awards: Congratulations Susie Y!
Congratulations to our Year 13 student, Susie Y, for winning third place in the Biology division of the 2024 S.-T. Yau High School Science Awards for her innovative research and prototype titled Tableware Jitter Elimination Technology for Parkinson's Disease.
The 17th S.-T. Yau Science Awards Finals and Award Ceremony, held last month, brought together 81 student teams from across the globe to compete in six disciplines: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, and Economics & Financial Modeling.
Parkinson's disease presents significant challenges to everyday tasks, including eating. In her paper, Susie emphasises: "Due to their tremors, people with Parkinson's disease (PD) also frequently feel embarrassed and lack confidence, which hinders their ability to engage socially and often makes it difficult for them to carry out daily chores at work and home."
To address this, Susie developed a low-cost, anti-tremor spoon designed to increase the likelihood of individuals with the disease to feed themselves independently. This solution is both affordable and equipped with a self-built machine-learning model capable of analysing tremor data. As Susie further explained: "People, therefore, can be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-assured."
Her advisor, Dominic Williams, also our Head of Biology, praised her accomplishment: "From the start, Susie approached her project with remarkable independence. She needed minimal guidance to get started and showed great initiative in seeking advice and expertise from both within and beyond the school. Her work demonstrated an impressive interdisciplinary approach, integrating biology, engineering, and programming to develop and refine her prototype. Susie's ability to take a theoretical concept and transform it into a fully functional prototype was outstanding. She exemplified creativity, resilience, and scientific rigour throughout the process, and it has been a privilege to support her journey."
Susie's achievement not only demonstrates her remarkable integration of knowledge in human biology and artificial science but also highlights her dedication to creating an inclusive solution for a debilitating disease that impacts many of our elderly not just physically but mentally, psychologically, and socially as well.
Established in 2008, the S.-T. Yau High School Science Award is a prestigious competition that fosters scientific research amongst the youth. Since its inception, over 5800 teams from 1200 schools have joined. Based at the Yau Mathematical Sciences Center (YMSC) of Tsinghua University, the award started with Mathematics, and has since expanded to include Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, and Economic and Financial Modeling. Remarkably, more than half of the awardees have been admitted to esteemed institutions such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Harvard University, MIT, Yale University and Princeton University.
