Exceptional Graduate Honours with Grand Winner Award at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2024
12 Dec 2024
Martas The Atom Gautam receives the Grand Winner Award for his distinguished project titled 'From Romanised Nepali to Pure Nepali: AI Transliteration Using Transformer Architecture for Low-Resourced Languages.
Mr. Tony Wong, Commissioner for Digital Policy (7th from the left), shares the remarkable achievements with recipients from the HKSAR delegation.
The Hong Kong delegation excels at the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2024, receiving eight Winner Awards, four First Runner-up Awards, three Second Runner-up Awards, and three Merit Award this year.
Martas The Atom Gautam, a recent graduate of BSc (Hons) in Computer Science, clinched the Grand Winner Award in the Tertiary Student: Application category at the prestigious Asia Pacific Information and Communications Technology Alliance (APICTA) Awards 2024. The event was held in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, during 4 - 7 December 2024.
The award-winning project, titled “From Romanised Nepali to Pure Nepali: AI Transliteration Using Transformer Architecture for Low-Resourced Languages”, addresses the challenges faced by low-resourced languages. This innovative transliteration system bridges the gap between Natural Language Processing of Romanised Nepali and the conversion to Devanagari script by utilising advanced technologies, such as Transformer architecture based Large Language Models like mT5, mBART, Llama 3, and GPT 3.5 Turbo to ensure high accuracy and context-aware transliteration, resulting in better search engine results in Nepali language. Thus, the system not only significantly improves digital accessibility for over 35 million Nepali speakers but also lays the groundwork for other low-resourced languages around the world.
Reflecting on this achievement, Martas expressed, “Receiving this award is an incredible honour. The unwavering support from my mentors and the Department has been instrumental in this journey. I am excited to further advance the system and make a lasting impact on low-resource communities.”
Dr. Yang Liu, Assistant Professor of the Department, also Martas’s Final Year Project Supervisor remarked, "It is truly impressive how Martas harnesses the power of AI to address global communication challenges. His applications, which seamlessly blend theoretical knowledge with practical implementation, are highly commendable."
The annual APICTA Awards programme serves as a platform for information and communications technology (ICT) talents from 15 participating economies across the Asia-Pacific region to exchange innovative ideas and forge partnerships. This year, the HKSAR delegation, comprising 25 teams, showcased their cutting-edge products and applications, ranking first among the participating economies. The HKSAR delegation secured a total of eight Winner Awards, four First Runner-up Awards, three Second Runner-up Awards, and three Merit Awards from over 260 entries.
