Lingnan University Shatters Records with 13 Awards at 51st Geneva Inventions Expo

Lingnan University has achieved spectacular results at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva with all 13 of the inventions it entered winning awards. This remarkable success includes one Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury, five Gold Medals, three Silver Medals and four Bronze Medals. The number of projects entered and awards received have more than doubled since last year, setting a new record for Lingnan, and confirming the University’s excellence in groundbreaking interdisciplinary research.

This year’s award-winning inventions integrate artificial intelligence (AI) with diverse applications (AI+X), notably AI + Creativity, AI + Humanity, AI + Pedagogy, AI + Sustainability, and AI + Trustability. These span professional domains such as data science, advanced materials, sustainable energy, art technology, and transformative education, fully demonstrating Lingnan’s achievements in interdisciplinary collaboration and human-centric innovation, which ultimately drive positive social impact and enhanced community wellbeing.

Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science at Lingnan University, expressed his delight at the University’s latest important milestone and congratulated all the award-winning teams. He said, “This year, multiple innovative inventions jointly developed by faculty and students’ teams were entered by Lingnan University. By actively breaking traditional disciplinary boundaries under the AI + concept, we have integrated AI into various academic fields, resulting in a series of human-centred research and innovative solutions that respond to societal needs, affirming the University’s mission of ‘Education for Service’. In the face of global technological innovation challenges, Lingnan continues to promote interdisciplinary research, strengthen industry–academia–research collaboration, and transform research into practical applications. At the same time, we seek to equip students with humanistic values to guide technological applications, and make a positive impact on society.”

The research project that received the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury is “FlexiBot: Make Every Parking Spot a Charging Spot”, developed by a team led by Prof Tang Xiaopeng, Assistant Professor (Presidential Early Career Scholar) of the Division of Science. FlexiBot is an intelligent robot designed to provide wireless charging for electric vehicles in any parking space. The robot automatically locates and moves to the nearest charging point. Its wireless charging module and adapter are compatible with all electric vehicles, offering park-and-charge compatible chargers. The system also features smart scheduling for charging, automatically avoiding peak electricity times to reduce grid load and cost.

A total of five projects have won the Gold Medals, including “SmartCool: Digital Twin AI, Cool Smarter with Human Feedback, Hit Carbon Zero”, developed by a team led by President S. Joe Qin; “BuildGuard: Blockchain Oracle AI for Instant Secure Compliance”, developed by Prof Wu Liupengfei, Assistant Professor of the Division of Industrial Data Science at the School of Data Science; “IDShield: AI Behavioural Fingerprinting for Anonymous Dialogue Decode”, developed by a team led by Prof Shen Jiaxing, Assistant Professor of the Division of Artificial Intelligence of the School of Data Science; “Solid-Safe Lithium Battery: Puncture-Proof, 500Wh/kg, Compatible with All Lines”, developed by a team led by Prof Chen Ze, Assistant Professor of the Wu Jieh Yee School of Interdisciplinary Studies; and “StorySketcher: A Multi-Agent AI System for Child-Led Co-Creative Narratives”, a project developed by Prof Xu Xian, Assistant Professor of the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries.

Three projects have won Silver Medals, including “Face Fortress: Adaptive All-In-One AI for Digital ID Safety”, developed by a team led by Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research); “Hydrogel Smart Window: Cool Without Power”, developed by a team led by Prof Chen Xi, Dean of the Wu Jieh Yee School of Interdisciplinary Studies; and “Smarter Traffic, Safer Roads: AIoT and Real-Time GeoAI Innovations for Urban Transport”, a project developed by Prof Paulina Wong Pui-yun, Head and Associate Professor (Presidential Early Career Scholar) of the Division of Science.

Four projects have won the Bronze Medals, including “DynaGuard: The Smart Brain for Dynamic System Monitoring and Diagnostics”, developed by a team led by President S. Joe Qin; “Generative AI Assessment System (GAAS): A Game-Changer for Timely Student Feedback”, developed by a team led by Prof Frankie Lam King-sun, Director of the Teaching and Learning Centre; “TransLab: AI-powered Translation Learning and Evaluation Suite”, a project developed by Prof George Chan Chi-yu, Assistant Professor of Practice of the Department of Translation; and “CineSim: Interactive Cinematography Lab”, a project developed by Dr Tobby Kan Shiu-tao, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Digital Arts and Creative Industries.

The International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva, held annually since 1973, is the world’s largest exhibition of innovation and invention. This year’s exhibition features over 1000 inventions from approximately 35 countries and regions.

List of winning projects and introduction

Awards Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury

Project Title FlexiBot: Make Every Parking Spot a Charging Spot

Winning Lingnan Faculty and Staff • Prof Tang Xiaopeng, Assistant Professor, Division of Science
• Mr Wang Fangyu, Senior Research Assistant, Division of Science

Project description FlexiBot is an intelligent robot designed to provide wireless charging for electric vehicles in any parking space. Key Features include Autonomous Mobile Charging, Excellent Compatibility, and Smart Scheduling.

Awards Gold Medal

Project Title SmartCool: Digital Twin AI, Cool Smarter with Human Feedback, Hit Carbon Zero

Project description An AI-driven air conditioning management system that optimises performance through the integration of predictive algorithms and RL-MPC control technology. It features desk-side smart feedback and load forecasting for energy saving.

Awards Gold Medal

Project Title BuildGuard: Blockchain Oracle AI for Instant Secure Compliance

Project description Acts like a tamper-proof inspector for remote manufacturing using AI and secure blockchain data feeds for real-time compliance audits.

Awards Gold Medal

Project Title IDShield: AI Behavioural Fingerprinting for Anonymous Dialogue Decode

Project description Designed to detect and remove behavioural signals that could lead to re-identification in AI platforms, ensuring privacy compliance.

Awards Gold Medal

Project Title Solid-Safe Lithium Battery: Puncture-Proof, 500Wh/kg, Compatible with All Lines

Project description An innovative all-solid-state lithium battery without flammable electrolytes, offering high energy density and enhanced safety for drones and electric vehicles.

Awards Silver Medal

Project Title Face Fortress: Adaptive All-In-One AI for Digital ID Safety

Project description Integrates deepfake detection and image quality filtering into a single verification pipeline for high-security scenarios.

Lingnan University achieves outstanding results at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions Geneva, winning 13 awards, more than twice as many as last year.

“Face Fortress: Adaptive All-In-One AI for Digital ID Safety”, developed by a team led by Prof Sam Kwong Tak-wu, Associate Vice-President (Strategic Research) (right), wins a Silver Medal.

“FlexiBot: Make Every Parking Spot a Charging Spot” wins a Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury. The project was developed with the participation of Mr Wang Fangyu, Senior Research Assistant of the Division of Science at Lingnan University.

“SmartCool: Digital Twin AI, Cool Smarter with Human Feedback, Hit Carbon Zero” wins a Gold Medal. Shown in the photo is Dr Liu Yiren, Postdoctoral Fellow of the Division of Industrial Data Science at the School of Data Science, who contributed to the project led by President S. Joe Qin.

Leading international industrial media outlet Control Global has announced that Prof S. Joe Qin, President and Wai Kee Kau Chair Professor of Data Science of Lingnan University, has been inducted into the 2026 Process Automation Hall of Fame in recognition of his long-term outstanding contributions and far-reaching impact in industrial data analytics, process control and automation, the only scholar from the Hong Kong SAR to receive this distinction. Inductees over the years have been key figures driving industrial technological innovation and theoretical breakthroughs, and the accolade is held in very high esteem by both the international academic and industrial communities.

Control Global commended Prof Qin’s academic career for its distinctive interdisciplinary nature, saying that with training spanning electrical engineering, control theory, and chemical engineering, he has demonstrated remarkable versatility across disciplines, and published extensively in process monitoring, system identification, chemometrics, and machine learning.

Prof Qin responded “Being inducted into the Hall of Fame is not the capstone of my academic journey, but rather a prompt for me to share my experiences more openly, including both the right and wrong paths I have taken, so that younger generations may benefit. This spirit of academic inheritance and selfless contribution is a value I hope to carry forward. My best advice to young engineers is to resist the pull of short-term rewards, recognise the full arc you are capable of, and always keep the bigger picture in sight.”

In a feature titled “Engineering a lifetime of reinvention”, Control Global describes Prof Qin’s interdisciplinary academic journey, noting his unusual background. The professor was born in Rizhao, Shandong province, and grew up during a period when formal schooling was limited, yet by the time he was 11 he had already taught himself to make wooden chairs to earn a living. When the higher education system reopened, Prof Qin seized the opportunity to gain admission to Tsinghua University at the age of 16 with the top scores in his cohort to study automatic control, laying the foundation for his engineering career.

Prof Qin recalls in the interview that while he was at Tsinghua University, he met the renowned scholar Prof Harmon Ray, who was visiting the campus and who advised him to pursue a PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Maryland - “life changing” advice. During his doctoral studies, he embarked on early research into how machines learn, examining neural networks’ strengths and limitations from a statistical perspective. After graduation, he became a principal engineer at Emerson Process Management, where he developed two commercial products successfully before returning to academia to teach and conduct research at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California.

Looking ahead, Prof Qin predicts that while industry has accumulated vast amounts of data over the past decades, its full value has yet to be realised due to previous limitations in computational power. Now although computing capabilities have advanced significantly in recent years, technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning remain underutilised in chemical engineering, and Prof Qin believes that applying advanced analytics to process monitoring, control, and optimisation will represent an unprecedented opportunity. He emphasises that the next generation of process engineers will need to be as fluent in data analytics and machine learning as they are in thermodynamics and fluid mechanics.

Prof S. Joe Qin, President of Lingnan University, has been inducted into the Process Automation Hall of Fame

Prof Qin also expresses concern about developments in engineering education, observing that, compared with 30 years ago, mathematical training in engineering programmes is weaker, and it has become more difficult to offer very rigorous courses. This is partly because most people want a programme where even the average student understands most of the concepts and graduates easily, although in the long run this may undermine the cultivation of advanced mathematical talent. Prof Qin suggests that universities create deliberately designed environments for mathematically gifted students to be challenged at an appropriate level, in order to preserve academic depth and international competitiveness.

Established in 2001, the Process Automation Hall of Fame recognises scholars and industry leaders for their outstanding contributions to process automation and control. The other inductees this year are Prof Manfred Morari of the University of Pennsylvania, an eminent international authority in modern systems engineering, and Prof Peter Morgan, longtime process engineer with Syncrude Canada and now an independent consultant.

For the full feature article, please visit: Engineering a lifetime of reinvention: 2026 Process Automation Hall of Fame's S. Joe Qin | Control Global