You might feel perplexed if you were to live in a town where you had to order coffee and buy clothes using sign language, especially when you know nothing about signing. This town might not exist in real life but it does virtually by a university research team which aims to promote sign language and social inclusion among the hearing and the deaf in a fun way. “SignTown”, an online AI assisted game launched by a team of CUHK sign language researchers and overseas partners, allows you to learn signs in a fictional town while completing daily tasks like a deaf person would, all simply in front of a camera.

A remarkable medley of research projects led by CUHK professors include free speech training for underprivileged children with language disorders from a one-stop service platform for language development "Speak Along", helping radiologists better identify pulmonary lesions from X-rays images, and mining public data for improved decisions by China market investors, all winning Hong Kong ICT Awards this year.