Tomorrow's Toughest Problems Solved By Today's Most Innovative Kids
Now in its 5th Year, "Young Innovators to Watch" Honors Top Student Ideas

LAS VEGAS, Dec. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Living In Digital Times logo (PRNewsFoto/Living In Digital Times)

What: Young Innovators to Watch Awards Ceremony at CES ® 2019

Now in its fifth year, the Young Innovators to Watch (YITW) awards ceremony is an experience of a lifetime for kids between the ages of 13-18 who are passionate about tech and have developed and submitted new and innovative ideas tackling health, societal, computer science, and educational challenges.

In the five years since YITW was launched, our winners have continued their commitment to the sciences, going on to Ivy League schools, launching projects, obtaining patents, and starting companies. The 2019 YITW winners were selected by judges from academia, venture capital, and product development.  The kids who win are flown to CES in Las Vegas to "see their future," accept their awards, tour CES in a curated way, and speak at Living in Digital Times' Digital Health Dinner.

When & Where: January 10, 2019; LVCC, N257 at 10:30 AM

Who: The Young Innovators to Watch Awards Winners:

Backen:  Tomorrow's learning system was built by a student today. Jerry Qu, 17, (Unionville High School, Markham, Ontario, Canada) created Backen using Tensorflow, Microsoft Azure, and various APIs, all connected in Python. The system uses machine learning to automatically tag keywords in research papers, and recommends and suggests relevant articles, the first step towards a universal knowledge bank.

HICCUP: At 17, Lyron Co Ting Keh (Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA), is already hard at work in one of the most prestigious cancer labs, the Alizadeh Lab (Stanford Medicine, Division of Oncology). He works on algorithms to help research in "Cancer of Unknown Primary" (CUP) where he designed and trained a robust and cost-effective machine learning model to carry out non-invasive CUP classifications from cell-free DNA (cfDNA).

HotSpot: HotSpot is a peer-to-peer Wifi network created on the blockchain that allows you to make money from sharing your hotspot. Born out of a During a Wifi-challenged visit in Berlin, 17-year olds Vishanth Thangavelautham and Tahla Atta  (R.H. King Academy, Toronto, Canada) didn't want to waste $20 on an Uber and took the train, but they didn't have Wifi and didn't know how to navigate. They only needed Wifi for 10 minutes so why buy a different SIM card? Should they not be able to just pay to use someone else's network for five or ten minutes?

Lumen: Kumaran Akilan, 18, and Archishman Sravankumar, 17, (Cupertino High School, Cupertino, CA) have devised a promising algorithm for detecting early onset of Alzheimer's Disease via retinal scan. They've been working with data sets supplied from a Belfast University, creating a completely autonomous algorithm. Along with a team of mentors in the fields of ophthalmology and computer science, they hope to fulfill the promise of a low-cost, non-invasive early detection test.

Quantum Vector:  Tanisha Bassan, 17, (St. Robert Catholic High School, Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada) is leveraging quantum machine learning using IBM's Qiskit software to run a quantum support vector machine kernel algorithm. Support vector machines, she says, help computers classify different types of objects (cats & dogs) and can project complex data structures into higher dimensions for accurate classification.

Why:  If you're a journalist following the future of technology and want to learn more about the Young Innovators to Watch awards and the winners, we can connect you with Living in Digital Times founder Robin Raskin, and can introduce you to the young innovators who won this year's awards as well as past recipients.

Contact:  Leigh Anne Varney and Lisa Sheeran, Varney Business Communication, 415.713.0713; 510-710-1004; la@varneybusiness.com, lisasheeranpr@gmail.com

 

SOURCE Living in Digital Times