SINGAPORE: What does independent living mean for persons with disabilities, and how can technology help them achieve it? 52 student finalists, chosen competitively from over thousands of students from 10 Singapore’s polytechnics and autonomous universities, attempted to find that answer through six weeks of immersion, visiting care facilities, speaking with beneficiaries, and iterating solutions with real end-users.
Today, those solutions were put to the test at the fourth annual Dell InnovateFest grand finals at National Gallery Singapore, hosted by Dell Technologies, with Mr Edwin Tong SC, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs, as Guest-of-Honour. In addition, Mr Eric Chua, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Social and Family Development and the Ministry of Law, took on an expanded role this year as Chairman of the Dell InnovateFest Advisory Committee, signalling the deepening of public-private-academic partnership at the heart of the programme.
Organised in partnership with MINDS (formerly Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore) and local disability-focused charity SPD, this year’s hackathon challenged students to develop AI and cloud-native solutions that empower Persons with Intellectual Disability (PWIDs) and Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) to live more independently and inclusively.
This year’s theme – Inclusive and Independent Living – directly aligns with Singapore’s Enabling Masterplan 2030, which identifies assistive technology as a core enabler of independent living for PWDs and PWIDs. Problem statements were developed in close collaboration with MINDS and SPD, grounding student solutions in the lived realities of beneficiaries rather than hypothetical use cases. Student teams were challenged to build solutions that help PWIDs and individuals with communication difficulties maintain daily living skills and overcome communication breakdowns, so they can engage more independently and confidently in the community. Throughout the development process, teams engaged in regular discussions with MINDS and SPD to gather feedback and further refine their solutions.
The students even took their research further by visiting the homes of PWIDs, gaining firsthand insight into the daily challenges their solutions needed to address.
Over the six-week competition, student teams were mentored by 30 industry experts from Dell Technologies and ecosystem partners including Microsoft, Certis, NCS, NVIDIA, across areas such as AI engineering, platform engineering, machine learning operations, containerisation and cloud-native architecture. Teams had direct access to Dell Technologies cloud-native platform to deploy their applications, as well as Dell Pro Max with GB10 for secure local AI development and testing.
A defining feature of the 2026 edition was the return of a past finalist as industry mentor. Tay Jeung Hong competed in last year’s hackathon and his technical curiosity and problem-solving mindset caught the attention of Dell Technologies which led him to a role at the Dell APJ AI Innovation Hub. He is working alongside Ryan Sim, a 2023 Dell InnovateFest champion on Physical AI projects. This year, Jeung Hong returned to mentor the next cohort. Their story is a full-circle moment that reflects the programme’s long-term impact on Singapore’s technology talent pipeline. Many of finalists from Dell InnovateFest have also secured full-time roles and internships at Dell and its partner ecosystem.
Dell InnovateFest is a key enablement pillar of the APJ AI Innovation Hub. Since 2023, the hub has equipped over 11,000 students and working professionals with industry-relevant AI and cloud-native capabilities through its initiatives.
Final results for Dell InnovateFest 2026 – The team from Ngee Ann Polytechnic, with their solution InSync, a personalised voice and AI support communication facilitator, and the team from National University of Singapore, with their solution PotPal, a healthy eating diet companion, emerged as the winners of the polytechnic and university tracks respectively, each receiving a grand prize of SGD 10,000.