SINGAPORE, 29 March – SIT students emerged second from among 10 finalist teams in the Cool Ideas for HDB Living 2014 competition. However, unlike most of the other teams which were made up of only engineering students, team SITuations from SIT comprised of two engineering students and a physiotherapy student.
Team SITuations celebrates winning second place along with SIT staff at the Cool Ideas for HDB Living 2014 Exhibition on 29 March 2014 at HDB Hub. (From left) Asst Prof Alfred Tan; Kathrine Koo, Director, Student Life; Alex Woh Yu Ker, member of team SITuations; Asst Prof Edmund Liew, Programme Director; Ernest Fong Tze Chow, leader of team SITuations; Prof Loh Han Tong, Vice-Provost; Woon Kok Meng, Director (Programmes Administration) and Programme Director; Prof Tan Thiam Soon, President, SIT. Photo | SIT Sarah Loh
Ernest Fong and Alex Woh from the SIT-Newcastle University’s Mechanical Design and Manufacturing Engineering programme, as well as Jerome Ng from the SIT-Trinity College Dublin’s Physiotherapy programme; successfully entered the finals of the competition, with their idea of converting heat from household appliances into electrical energy.
“You will be surprised to know that it was Jerome Ng, a physiotherapy student with SIT-Trinity College of Dublin, who initiated the idea of participating in this competition,” said Assistant Professor Edmund Liew, Programme Director, SIT.
The trio met at an Entrepreneurship Workshop organised as part of SIT’s Value-Added-Programme (VAP). The VAP serves to enrich the learning and university experiences of SIT students across various degree programmes through short courses on personal effectiveness and management skills.
According to Liew, the engineering students, Fong and Woh, contributed to the technical aspects of the project while Ng was instrumental in converting complex engineering jargon into simple layman terms for the project’s YouTube video.
As a winning team in the competition, team SITuations is eligible for the Cool Ideas Fund from the Housing and Development Board, which provides a grant, capped at $10,000, to support the cost of developing and test-bedding their prototype. To meet the fund’s dollar-for-dollar matching criteria, the team, with the support from SIT, is currently exploring funding opportunities with industry partners.
