Finding joy in electronics repair | Mashiat Lamisa | TEDxTinHauWomen

Full Video: Finding joy in electronics repair | Mashiat Lamisa | TEDxTinHauWomen - YouTube

"Your relationship with this phone will last two years before it's outdated and buggy." Imagine if every smartphone came with this label. Frustrated with the throwaway culture around devices, Mashiat asks us to question our current throwaway attitude towards electronics.

Mashiat Lamisa, a socially conscious product and design engineer, wants to make tech accessible to all. She loves to harness her innovative thinking and design acumen to find solutions for the most pressing societal challenges. She co-founded Asia’s first electronic device repair community and also takes electronics that cannot be repaired or fixed and turns them into jewellery.

Imagine wearing a chipset pendant and earrings from your old phone or laptop. This Changemaker and Climate Action Innovation awardee wants to create a big impact in the realm of electronic waste upcycling.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

“We all have the strength to build our dreams fearlessly. Being a woman in engineering ignites this strength and paves the way to #BreakTheBias.” says Mashiat Lamisa, a graduate of the HKUST’s Division of Integrative Systems and Design. 

International Women’s Day on March 8 is a time to celebrate the achievements – social, economic, cultural, and political – of women worldwide.

Mashiat Lamisa arrived in Hong Kong almost five years ago from Bangladesh. But images from her home country of children rummaging through toxic rubbish, some of it imported electronic waste (e-waste), have not left her.

“Electronic goods – whether it’s an iPhone or a laptop – are designed to break, and a lot of these devices are discarded as e-waste and end up in landfills in Hong Kong – or third world places like my home country, causing heavy pollution and toxicity,” says the 23-year-old.

In 2021, the World Health Organization released a report on the impact of e-waste on human health and found that those working to recover valuable materials such as copper and gold from the growing global tide of e-waste are at risk of exposure to more than 1,000 harmful substances, including lead, mercury and nickel.

Passionate about global health and sustainability, Lamisa got busy with Projekt, a social enterprise that teaches people how to fix their devices instead of throwing them out.

Driven by its “universal right to repair” philosophy, Projekt wants people to rethink consumerism and e-waste to help the environment.

“There’s a lot of stress, money and regulations around repairing devices, so we set up workshops to show people how easy it is to fix them,” says Lamisa, a graduate of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Integrative Systems and Design course.

“We take dead devices, dismantle them, and upcycle them into jewellery – it’s also a good way for people to see the inner workings of their electronics,” she says.

“One woman brought her mum’s old phone to a workshop and made a locket for herself. Now she can keep it forever.”

To read more:

South China Morning Post

On International Women’s Day 2022, three Hong Kong trailblazers for sustainability, social justice and gender equality

IWD X HKUST

SPOTLIGHTS ON WOMEN

Prof. YEUNG Sai-Kit, Associate Professor at the Division of Integrative Systems & Design and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, was recently appointed as an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), a leading international scientific journal in the field of computer graphics. Published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the bimonthly journal has an impact factor of 5.414, which ranks the first place among computer graphics journals by Google Scholar.

The appointment is a recognition of Prof. Yeung’s contributions and academic achievements in the computer graphics area, especially his pioneering work on data-driven functional layout design “Make it Home” in SIGGRAPH 2011, and his work on 3D vision and computational design. As the first in HKUST and the only editorial board member representing Hong Kong, Prof. Yeung will work closely with an international team of academic and industry experts to keep up the momentum and scale new heights in the next three years.

“It is really a true honor for me to serve the ACM TOG editorial board and it means a lot to me as I am the first one from my alma mater to perform this role. I believe this appointment will encourage our students to pursue high quality research,” said Prof. Yeung.

TOG has a strong synergy with New York-based ACM SIGGRAPH (ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques), the premiere conference organization in graphics. With over 50 years of history, ACM SIGGRAPH creates a platform for researchers, artists, developers, filmmakers, scientists, and professionals to exchange the latest updates and promote cross-disciplinary interaction on computer graphics and interactive techniques. Of the six issues published by TOG each year, two are special issues containing the papers presented at the annual SIGGRAPH and SIGGRAPH Asia conferences. Conversely, authors of papers published in the regular issues of TOG can present their work at the conferences.

Holder of three degrees from HKUST (PhD (ELEC), MPhil (BIEN) & BEng (CPEG)), Prof. Yeung conducts cutting-edge research on 3D reconstruction, understanding, modeling, and redesign, and uses AI techniques for design and content generation, human-robot interaction, and novel algorithms to enhance VR and AR applications.

Recently he has been working closely with marine biologists to develop novel computer vision and graphics techniques and integrative systems, such as underwater semantic simultaneous localization and mapping for marine robots navigation and surveying, 3D reconstruction of local coral communities, and an automated platform for culturing shellfish. These aim to solve a wide range of problems relating to marine biodiversity and sustainability.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is joining the “Level Up Digital Talent Program” launched by Facebook today as the lead partner to nurture future digital talents.  Utilizing Facebook’s Blueprint digital marketing materials, HKUST has helped develop a curriculum to equip not just its own students, but those from other partnering universities with digital marketing skills that would help the younger generation thrive in the new digital era.

As a pioneer in entrepreneurship education, HKUST has seen an increasing need in bridging the skill gap among the younger generation in harnessing social media as a digital marketing tool.  So in this new semester, the University has launched ENTR1001 – a credit-bearing entrepreneurship course offered by the HKUST’s Division of Integrative Systems and Design for students at HKUST as well as those from Lingnan University, and the Singapore University of Technology and Design.  Students from the three universities will work in teams to put marketing theories into practice, much like the future of work.

To further extend the reach and impact, HKUST’s Entrepreneurship Education Team and Facebook also co-developed a set of digital marketing modules and workshops for university students from HKUST, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Live training sessions will be provided by Facebook Blueprint trainers and HKUST teaching staff, where students can develop their Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger skills, and equip themselves for the digital marketing field.

Students who successfully complete the ENTR 1001 course or the workshop will receive free vouchers from Facebook, which they can use for taking Facebook’s examinations.  Those who pass will gain certifications that would allow them to join the Facebook Certification Career Network, where they will be able to share profiles and credentials directly with major employers like BBDO, dentsu, GroupM, Havas Media, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, Reprise Digital, Vayner Media, Facebook and others.

Other interested parties are also welcomed to attend the workshop but they would have to take the examination at their own costs.  

“The future our students face is dynamic and filled with wicked challenges that need to be addressed by transdisciplinary and innovative solutions,” said Prof. King CHOW, Acting Dean of Students at HKUST.  “At HKUST, we believe everyone should be entrepreneurial – curious about the world, driven, collaborative and risk-embracing. These are key qualities of future talents.  We are delighted to join hands with Facebook to nurture future digital talents by offering different learning opportunities for students from HKUST and other local and global universities.”

Meanwhile, Facebook will also launch a “Digital Marketing Master Class for NGOs” with The Hong Kong Council of Social Service Institute to equip NGO practitioners with the necessary skills, knowledge and resources to cope with the rising challenges and changing dynamics of the social environment.  Students who complete the workshops and obtain the Facebook certificates may have the opportunities to work together with selected NGOs on their digital marketing campaigns.