BuildMind AI, a team led by Yike WANG, a Master’s student from HKU School of Computing and Data Science (CDS), has won the Gold Award at the National Finals of the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition 2025 (CICSIC). The award-winning project was supervised by Professor Ping LUO, Assistant Director (Outreach and Advancement) and Associate Professor of CDS.

In 2025, CICSIC attracted over 24.43 million participants from 5,673 universities across 161 countries and regions. Wang’s team distinguished themselves early on by securing First Place in the Artificial Intelligence Category at the Hong Kong–Macao Regional Selection. Building on this strong performance, the team continued to refine their work and ultimately won the Gold Award at the national finals held at Zhengzhou University.

The award-winning project, BuildMind AI, is an intelligent architectural design system capable of compressing the traditional 12-week pre-planning period to approximately two weeks, generating an initial design draft in as little as 15 minutes. By lowering the barriers to professional-grade design support, it brings real value to SMEs, community projects, and individual homeowners. “Most importantly, it embeds sustainability into the earliest stages of planning, demonstrating how AI can drive both innovation and social impact in practical and meaningful ways,” said Prof Luo.

This award not only underscores the disruptive potential of BuildMind AI in modern architectural design but also reflects CDS’s commitment to fulfilling its mission of fostering applied learning. By combining practice-oriented teaching, steadfast support for student competitions, and dedicated academic mentorship, CDS continues to empower young innovators to transform academic excellence into real-world impact.