Mr LAU Chi Ho (PhD) and Mr YIM Kwok Woon (CDE, Yr-4), who teamed up with students from Department of Biomedical Science, School of Data Science and Department of Finance, have won the Best Fintech Award in International Blockchain Olympiad (IBCOL) 2020. The winning team, supervised by Dr Ray Cheung and Dr Alan Yeung, developed a project which aims to nurtures the existing microcredit industry by utilizing indigenous machine learning algorithms and the disruptive attribute of blockchain that bring the highest standards of evaluation, transparency, and cost-efficiency.
IBCOL 2020 attracted 60 teams from 15 different countries to join the international round. It embodies the characteristics of a business case competition, an academic whitepaper conference, and a "hackathon". Contestants of up to six students first write a whitepaper to describe a complete solution, and finalists are required to create a poster board and a pitch presentation. This competition rewards students who can think deeply about a problem and the solution, and explain it to others in a coherent manner.