17 November 2004

SPEECH BY DR. CHEONG KAM KHOW, REPRESENTATIVE OF JUDGES AT SG@HOME PRIZE GIVING CEREMONY ON WEDNESDAY, 17 NOVEMBER 2004, AT THE MERCURY ROOM, SINGAPORE SCIENCE CENTRE

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Introduction

On behalf of my fellow judges, allow me to make a few remarks on the submissions that we have reviewed. I will keep this review short as I am painfully aware that I stand between you and the announcement of the winning entries.

The key challenge for us lies in identifying an enticing, educational and cause-worthy application that appeals to both school students and the public at large. This should be a grand challenge problem that requires many years worth of computing. Such a grand challenge should encompass one or more of the following attributes:

(a) have mass appeal;
(b) have a worthy cause;
(c) be creative and original;
(d) have educational value;
(e) be a large problem that is computational intensive; and
(f) not require intensive data transfer compared to its computational needs.

Above all, the winning entries should have a ‘Cool’ or ‘Wow’ factor. This is a characteristic that is difficult to define but yet one recognizes it when faced with it.


The Judging Process

The submissions in each category were reviewed by a separate panel of 3 judges, who short-listed the entries to 8 per category. From the final 8 entries in the Schools category, we identified the ‘School with the Most Innovative Entries.’ In a similar manner, we also identified the ‘Institute of Higher Learning with the Most Innovative Entries.’

The final decision on the top 3 winning entries in each category was made by a fourth panel of 6 judges.

The Entries Received

As expected, the judges were not disappointed with the standard of the submissions received especially for the Schools category. They were of a high standard on par with those from the other two categories.

An analysis of the entries provided the following insight; they are:
a) The common themes in all 3 categories are: looking for cures for diseases such as SARS and cancer, improving traffic situation, 3D rendering/animation and predicting weather or environmental events;
b) There are more ideas in the submissions by Schools than the other two categories;
c) The ideas in the School categories that did not appear in the other categories are: prevention of hacking, video analysis for security reasons, a virtual tour of Singapore and speech/text translation, improving security for schools, solving mathematical problem and digital archival of photographs;
d) The ideas unique to the IHLs categories are: video encoding, classification of data, new age drama show, turbulence, online dating/match making and calculating the probability of death.
e) The ideas unique to the Open categories are: cryptography, economic/finance forecasting, prevention of spamming, simulation to study human behaviour and how the 5-day week will affect Singapore’s population.

Conclusion

My fellow judges join me in congratulating the winners this afternoon. Thank you.