Choa Mun has moved frequently throughout her life and as a result, she was always rebuilding friendships, as well as working to maintain her previous ones. Through this, she realized the importance of communication in building and maintaining relationships, as well as the rarity of pointless conversations.

Tarak Parikh worries that this generation of teens are not ready to enter the “Real World” because of how focused students are on their grades and memorising content, instead of understanding and applying that knowledge.

As a teenager, Saamyak Sharma has seen some cases where the media has twisted news. He decided to make a talk to help people out with going in depth about media bias. He has been around media and that is what got him interested in his talk.

When Effie Li was living in Tondo, Manila, she became interested in architecture as she wants to design flexible housings for the poor and working class. Her desire has led her to realize that hostile architecture is an urban design trend that heavily affects the poor and unhoused community. This talk focuses on why there must be a balance of hostile architecture in a city.

Since Lilia Law was little, she has always been interested in bioengineering; however, she notices the controversy regarding bioengineering and hopes that people can view bioengineering in a more positive light. This talk focuses on the necessity to promote bioengineering in terms of the entropic imbalance between AI and humans.

One of the most commercially viable sports, football is in dire need of change because of massive corruption throughout the skeleton of the sport. It has led to a lot of consequences with shady business, human rights issues, and so on. In this talk, George Alex focuses on how the sport needs to correct itself.

Yusia Xiao has no idea why she chose her topic, but it’s probably because she low key wanted to BS her presentation. And only later on did she realize that she did too much grounded research for it to be complete BS. The main goal of Yusia’s talk is to spread awareness of the negatives of BS’ing.

When Tony Yang first came to Hong Kong, he had a bit of an identity crisis. The uncertainty of moving coupled with the overwhelmingly urban environment made him worry he would be lost amidst the skyscrapers. Through his discovery and exploration of the Sham Shui Po art scene, he discovered a brand new side to the district, and indeed a newfound appreciation of the city.

Since 2014, Jessie Choy has been an active volunteer of tutoring ethnic minority children. This act has inspired her to think of cheap, yet effective methods to improve a learning environment to help these children. This talk taps into the unexplored realm of smell in education.

Lately diversity has been a common topic of discussion when Hollywood is mentioned. Most of it has been based on assumptions and beliefs, but Florencia Emulo’s talk brings out the actual statistics. ‘Casting a light on Hollywood’ has the sole purpose to bring awareness to this issue, and encourage a change.

Growing up, Esha Mahbubani watched the ones closest to her suffer from mental health issues and who were afraid to open up about it due to the stigma surrounding this issue. In this talk, she hopes to be able to open up a conversation that is swept under the rug in many Asian cultures.

In the year of 2016, Edria Li was fueled with disbelief, as Americans voted for Trump’s inauguration to office. She questioned the thought processes of Americans, as they voted for a man who called women, “fat pigs”. What were they thinking? Why did they vote for him? Did they agree with him? After deliberation over deliberation, she arrived to the answer: Political Correctness.

When Rosalyn Shi was eight, she learned that gay people could not get married; questioning why always led to the answer: “you’re too young to understand.” At age 17, she finally rejects the answer she’s been given and discovers the future of the LGBTQ community from its complex past and optimistic present. Upon moving to Hong Kong, Rosalyn steadily gained confidence and found her own identity: a proudly queer Chinese American who loves cats and strives for equity.