Three-day online conference, EmTech Asia 2020 held from 4th to 6th August 2020 draw together almost 800 industry professionals representing 24 countries to discuss emerging technologies and its influence to the world around us.
As the first virtual edition of the conference kickstarted on 4th August 2020, it presented an engaging agenda which enabled participants to hear from 45 of the world’s most influential leaders and innovators. Key topics discussed during the conference include artificial intelligence, robotics, sustainability, healthcare, and immersive media. All of which tied in to how these areas influence emerging technologies and could potentially change the way we live and the infrastructure around us.
Speakers included representatives from Google, Autodesk Robotics Lab, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME), Microsoft Research, and spokespersons from universities including UNSW, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and IMRE at A*STAR, among others.
“EmTech Asia brought together technical experts from all over the world and connect them with industry people. I am greatly amazed and inspired by all the breakthrough technology presented,” said Simon Lui, director and expert AI Scientist, QQ Music, Tencent Music Entertainment (TME). He spoke about how AI could be utilised to leveraged using the latest Deep Learning and Music Information Retrieval (MIR) techniques to handle challenges in the music industry.
Graham Ruby, principal investigator from Calico shared how in the face of the current pandemic, EmTech Asia has created a connection of a broad range of speakers from across the globe – keeping the online experience engaging. During his session, Graham Ruby went through a statistical framework connecting mortality statistics with the biology of ageing.
One key session presented by Bob Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and academic co-founder of Moderna, discussed how research and development is key in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as gave his valuable input of how to bring an innovation to commercialisation.
Artificial intelligence and its impact on ethics, finance, and drug design was another key theme of the conference. Experts discuss their personal research in artificial intelligence and paved the way for further discussion on the topic of how artificial intelligence is already impacting our lives.
Other key sessions included one by Steven Tucker, co-founder of Re:Mission Health on using wearable technology for cancer prevention.
Dr Jeremy Lim, CEO of the first Asian Microbiome Library discussed how the microbiome is implicated in numerous diseases and can be used to save lives, thanks to advances in modern genetic sequencing and computing tools in his session; “Saving Lives the Microbiome Way”.
“Although this is the first-ever virtual EmTech Asia, I felt like I was physically present for all the talks. Excellent job on ensuring that all talks went on smoothly, and that attendees are well engaged in the live chat,” said Wong Wei Ru, researcher, the department of electrical engineering at the University of Malaysia.
The virtual edition of EmTech Asia was supported by Deep Tech Partner, SGInnovate; Innovation Partners; Hong Kong Baptist University; Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology; and many other sponsors and partners. The organisers express their deep gratitude to all parties involved. [APBN]