RAWALPINDI:
A group of students of the Institute of Space Technology (IST), Islamabad has won the Best AI Use Award in the 2025 AsiaPacific (APAC) Solution Challenge 2025, an elite international tech contest sponsored by Google and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Among the 750 plus teams representing 12 countries in the Asia-pacific, Team GeoGemma overwhelmed the judges with a wave system that employs Artificial Intelligence in the assessment of the early warning system. They apply satellite imagery and the Gemini API to provide risk assessment of disaster prone regions- possibly saving lives through geospatial technology.
Team i+1, NUCES FAST of Pakistan was another group that got into the top 10 finalists. Their project is an AI-based classifier of documents based on the development of automating the simplification of complex texts to make them accessible to neurodivergent people as a way of fostering accessibility in education and communication.
Teams that were the finalists represented South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia, and that means that Pakistan was one of the leading regional innovators.
In celebration, the Pakistan Ambassador to Philippines, Dr Asima Rabbani, invited both sides to the official residence in Manila. She commended their ingenuity, stressed the importance of academic advisors and institutions and rejoiced at the rise of Pakistan as an exporter of AI-related ideas.
