To drive the innovation and entrepreneurship trend among students at Taiwan Tech and implement the integration of campus creativity with industry engagement, the Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association, in collaboration with the Business Incubation Center, hosted the second "Taiwan Tech Young Entrepreneurs' Rising Star Competition" on September 22, 2023. This event attracted the participation of 31 teams, comprising a total of 106 participants. Thirty-six industry experts and faculty members provided guidance, with 20 of them being outstanding alumni. In the end, the "AI Art Twin Stars" team, consisting of Yeh-Hsing Lu, a second-year Ph.D. student in Smart Manufacturing Technology, and Kai-Ren Lin, a second-year master's student, secured victory with their AI server hybrid cloud and integrated service system, earning them a substantial one-million-dollar startup fund. 

The million-dollar winning team, "AI Art Twin Stars", has developed a new product that combines AI-driven drawing, computation and model training, and consultancy services. Users can utilize a pre-loaded AI environment setup server by expert consultants, enabling maintenance, updates, and consultancy services through their autonomously developed AI hybrid cloud service features. The aim is to eliminate the barrier where only IT experts can use AI, allowing regular business owners and the public to benefit from AI technology.

A group photo of the million-dollar winning team. From left to right: Entrepreneurship Consultant Bai-Lu Wang (Outstanding Alumni), President of Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association Ke-Chu Lee, team leader Yeh-Hsing Lu, team member Kai-Ren Lin, and vice president Tzu-Chuan Chou.

Team leader Yeh-Hsing Lu illustrated an example, stating that for e-commerce platforms offering subscription services, utilizing an AI system on their computers allows them to showcase clothing items on virtual models through AI-generated drawings based on product photos. They could even specify the location, such as Paris or Tokyo, for the virtual modeling shoot. This significantly reduces the time and spatial constraints associated with photographing products for e-commerce platforms. He emphasized that this is just one of many potential applications, and subscribing to various AI solutions through the platform opens doors to many possibilities.

Regarding their participation in the "Taiwan Tech Young Entrepreneurs' Rising Star Competition" and the luck to get a one-million-dollar startup fund, Yeh-Hsing Lu shared, "The entrepreneurial journey is incredibly challenging. Don't give up due to one or two failures. As long as the direction is correct, with various attempts and adjustments, success will come!" He also advised fellow students interested in entrepreneurship to link their projects to entrepreneurship in their regular reports or assignments, maximizing their impact and minimizing the academia-industry gap.

Vice President of Taiwan Tech, Tzu-Chuan Chou, expressed gratitude to the Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association and various outstanding industry leaders for their significant contributions. He highlighted that these collaborations enhance the integration of the university's research and development technology with students' creativity, nurturing not only their innovative thinking but also their practical problem-solving abilities.

Ke-Chu Lee, chairman of International Games System Co., Ltd., and concurrently serving as President of Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association, pointed out that through the experience sharing by senior alumni and Taiwan Tech's well-structured entrepreneurship support system, the gap between academia and industry practice can be bridged. This cultivation of a proactive and courageous entrepreneurial spirit among junior students aids in the transformation of campus technology into commercial practices. He also expressed the hope that this initiative would further facilitate mentorship and foster connections between alumni and junior students, collectively nurturing the next generation of successful young entrepreneurs.

The speech and overall Remarks by Lee Ke-Chu, President of the Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association.

Yeh-Hsing Lu pointed out that Taiwan Tech provides an excellent entrepreneurial environment. The Outstanding Alumni Association even offers exclusive entrepreneurship consultancy, allowing inexperienced students to reduce the setbacks encountered during entrepreneurship through knowledge exchange and guidance. He described these abundant resources as "comparable to the top universities". He expressed the hope to leverage his own experience to promote the school's resources, enabling more junior students to deeply understand and effectively utilize them.

In this edition of the "Taiwan Tech Young Entrepreneurs' Rising Star Competition", Taiwan Tech opened up team formation for students from different schools for the first time. They integrated abundant, cross-disciplinary industrial resources, and facilitated an industry experience transfer, guided by senior students from Taiwan Tech. This approach aims to increase the probability of successful technical commercialization, allowing young students to absorb the foundations and experiences of their predecessors. This helps refine their entrepreneurial plans, enhance competitiveness, and progress towards market commercialization, ultimately becoming future entrepreneurial leaders.

In addition to awarding a one-million-dollar startup fund to the winning teams, the Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association also provided a total of nearly 300,000 NTD as entrepreneurial incentives to the 11 teams that advanced to the semi-finals and finals. The aim is to encourage student innovation and entrepreneurship, drive the entrepreneurial environment in Taiwanese campuses, boost industrial development, and nurture more young entrepreneurs with innovative thinking and practical capabilities.

A group photo featuring all award-winning teams and the Executive Committee of the Taiwan Tech Outstanding Alumni Association.