{"id":7168,"date":"2026-10-06T22:39:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T02:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/?p=7168"},"modified":"2026-10-06T22:42:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T02:42:56","slug":"ai-wearable-for-people-with-visual-impairments-wins-top-prize-at-canadian-youth-innovation-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/canada\/7168\/","title":{"rendered":"AI wearable for people with visual impairments wins top prize at Canadian youth innovation contest"},"content":{"rendered":"
Forty-five secondary students share $100,000, funded by a donation from GPTZero co-founder Alex Cui.<\/em><\/pre>\n
TORONTO, ON<\/strong> \u2014 A student who built an AI-powered wearable device for people with visual impairments has won the top prize at the 2026 Canada Youth Innovation Competition.<\/p>\n
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Surya Narayan Santhakumar received the Grand Award and $10,000 for VisionIQ, a wearable that draws on multiple AI models, at a ceremony in Toronto on Oct. 4. Santhakumar was one of 45 students in Grades 7 to 12 who shared $100,000 in prize money.<\/p>\n
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The prize pool was covered by a $100,000 donation from Alex Cui, co-founder of the AI-detection startup GPTZero. The money went to the Canada AXCD Youth Innovation Award Foundation, which was formally launched at the event.<\/p>\n
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Alex Cui, co-founder of GPTZero<\/p><\/div>\n
In a keynote address, Alex Cui urged young Canadians to embrace artificial intelligence and apply it to real-world problems. He described the technology as a tool for creativity and problem-solving that is already reshaping how people learn, work and live.<\/p>\n
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Six entries won Outstanding Awards worth $5,000 each. Owen Song was recognized for technical breakthrough with Inflect v2, an ultra-compact text-to-speech model. Jett Mu won the smart cities category with GTFS Neural Network, which predicts transit delays. Anie Udofia took the healthcare excellence award for Operation Oracle, an AI cancer-screening platform. Ryan Zander and Hugo Bui won for social impact and sustainability with the C.L.E.A.R. System, an air-quality early-warning system.<\/p>\n
Ethan Wu and Jonathan Shi won best product for CodeDreams, and Yichen Liu and Shayan Doroudiani won best business potential for LaneLab. Excellent Awards, worth $2,000 each, and Merit Awards were also handed out.<\/p>\n
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The competition ran for nearly six months on the theme of AI agents and future living. It had tracks in AI and intelligent systems, biotechnology and health, environment and clean energy, and social innovation. Organizers said a panel of university professors, industry experts and entrepreneurs judged entries double-blind on technical feasibility, innovation and social value.<\/p>\n
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Jiantian Cui, chair of the organizing committee (Photo provided by organizer)<\/p><\/div>\n
Jiantian Cui, chair of the organizing committee, said technology alone is not the future, and that the future is made by young people willing to ask questions, imagine and act. The competition, the chair said, is meant to give students a place to turn ideas into working projects.<\/p>\n
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About 75 participants walked a red carpet to open the ceremony, a gesture meant to recognize every student who completed a project, not only the winners. Machine learning researcher Joyce Yang was among the guests who spoke about their research and career paths.<\/p>\n
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The competition was hosted by the foundation, with Scotia Wealth Management as title sponsor and CJT Family Office as co-host. More than 300 people attended, including MPs Jean Yip and Vincent Ho, Ontario MPP Logan Kanapathi and Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Richmond Hill Mayor David West sent letters of congratulation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Forty-five secondary students share $100,000, funded by a donation from GPTZero co-founder Alex Cui.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[171,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-canada","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7181,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7168\/revisions\/7181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriamedia.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}