The Young Inventors Awards aim at fostering the spirit of invention among students in Asia Pacific by recognizing and supporting outstanding efforts or projects that enhance quality of life in a significant or meaningful way.

Universities are invited to nominate recently completed student projects or those still underway but nearing completion. Projects can be in any field of study, but should display fresh thinking and spirit of invention. Entries will be judged for their creativity, originality, completeness, feasibility and the potential economic, societal or environmental impact.

A distinguished panel of judges composed of renowned leaders from a range of disciplines will select the winners. The top three winners will receive the latest HP computer equipment and a free trip to HP Labs in California, and their schools will receive cash prizes contributed to implement their students’ projects from Far Eastern Economic Review.

Ryuji Inai, an NUS bioengineering graduate student, has won the University's first Gold in the 4th Young Inventors Awards. Previous NUS wins in the annual competition organised by the Far Eastern Economic Review in association with Hewlett-Packard were a silver award in 2001 and a bronze in 2002.

Ryuji emerged tops in a field of 92 contestants from premier universities and tertiary institutions in Asia Pacific. Osaka-born Ryuji beat the keen competition with his breakthrough technique for building tiny two-dimensional (2-D) and three-dimensional (3-D) scaffolds from polymer nanofibres, which are many times smaller than a strand of hair. The scaffolds are used in tissue engineering for growing living cells and regenerating tissue - cells placed on the scaffolds attach themselves to the scaffold's polymer fibres and multiply. Tissue cultivated in this way has the potential to be used not only in growing new skin for skin grafts but also in regenerating muscle cells and blood vessels for transplants.

Adapting the existing method of creating the scaffolds through a process called electrospinning, Ryuji designed a machine that can, for the first time, build 3-D scaffolds as well as closely align the nanofibres in 2-D and 3-D scaffolds, allowing cell growth on the scaffolds to be controlled more precisely. All these promise faster growth of tissue for biomedical applications.

The polymer nanofibres are biodegradable, meaning they can degrade naturally in the body. Inai hopes that, eventually, they could be used to grow tissue in vitro, or inside the body.

So far, Inai has made headway controlling the diameter of the nanofibres, the distance between each one, their orientation and stacking in three dimensions. The next step: to refine the size of the polymer nanofibres, the thickness of the scaffolding, and the distance between each nanofibre by using different kinds of polymers. "If we can control the direction in which cells grow on the scaffold, we may be able to regenerate tissue faster," he explains, adding that it's still early days. Now Inai is applying for a patent for his technique of developing the nanofibres on his specially adapted electrospinning machine.

Jeffrey Goh, chief executive officer of Singapore-based Lightspeed Technologies and one of the judges in this year's Young Inventors Awards, describes Inai's work as "simple in concept" but having "a mind-boggling impact."

This small step makes it possible to create a predictable environment with hopefully predictable outcomes when used in the human body, Goh explains. "Imagine a vanishingly small fibre. Now put a bunch of them together [and] you get something like paper. Now, if you can make all the fibres line up like little soldiers on a parade ground and you get to control the two layers' alignment, you get something like a woven piece of cloth."

Inai says he likes working with polymer nanofibres because they can be used in a variety of disciplines--not just in medicine. The microscopic polymer nanofibres can be used to create "breathable" fabrics that are chemical barriers. They can also be used to make wound dressings, cosmetics, face masks, filtration systems, electrical conductors and medical prostheses. In addition, they can have drug-delivery applications.

"My research topic is to investigate the relationship between structure and properties of polymer nanofibres," he explains. "But our focus is on tissue engineering."

Ryuji's life-saving work wowed the international panel of 13 judges who looked for originality, potential impact on humanity, feasibility of commercialisation and quality of project presentation. Aside from getting himself a computer system worth US$5,000 and a trip to Hewlett-Packard's California labs, Ryuji also won a research grant worth US$7,500 for NUS.

in association with
      

For Students who can see Extraordinary

Ideas in Everyday Things

 

The Young Inventors Awards is hosted by Far Eastern Economic Review in association with Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific. The Awards aim at fostering the spirit of invention among students in Asia Pacific by recognizing and supporting outstanding efforts or projects that enhance quality of life in a significant or meaningful way.

Universities are invited to nominate recently completed student projects or those still underway but nearing completion. Projects can be in any field of study, but should display fresh thinking and spirit of invention. Entries will be judged for their creativity, originality, completeness, feasibility and the potential economic, societal or environmental impact.

A distinguished panel of judges composed of renowned leaders from a range of disciplines will select the winners. The top three winners will receive the latest HP computer equipment and a free trip to HP Labs in California, and their schools will receive cash prizes contributed to implement their students’ projects from Far Eastern Economic Review.