Samsung Electronics UK Ltd. has announced today two young Londoners, as finalists of its Gen-Z tech competition ‘Solve for Tomorrow’ for their AI education idea – Edicat. The youth competition, which is running for the first time in the UK, has seen teams from across the country submit ideas to help tackle one of four key challenges faced by society. They will now go on to compete against four other teams to be in with a chance of winning the £10,000 prize, and securing six months support from Samsung UK, with the winner to be announced in July 2021.

Edicat founders Mohammed (21) and Ben (24), have created an AI-driven learning platform that uses technology to design personalised study plans for students. The programme uses the latest cognitive diagnostic modelling and testing, alongside machine learning, to identify how a student is performing against the national curriculum. The results of which will identify the gaps in the student’s knowledge, and create a learning programme bespoke to the student’s needs. As the student works through this, Edicat will offer their teachers regular updates on their progress. Supporting the users with motivational messages and time management support to encourage engagement with the platform.

In the future, the team hopes to engage with the UK’s Department of Education, taking its revolutionary approach to learning nationwide. It believes that its data-driven approach and use of AI it will help to streamline and evolve the learning process, offering high quality, adaptive education irrespective of the user’s socio-economic background.

Whilst the platform’s primary aim is to support a student’s learning, Team Edicat believes its technology-first approach will also transform teachers’ approach to education, through its unique diagnostic modelling. This modelling allows the platform to produce tailored reports based on the students’ response to its programme, giving teachers data-driven insights to inform their approach to teaching in the classroom.

When asked about their experience so far, Team Edicat said ‘So very excited! We are very grateful to Samsung and Digital Catapult for providing us with this opportunity, it’s been a very enjoyable and informative experience so far. We’ve actually benefited more than we thought we would from the programme, this has been a great opportunity to further develop our idea taking a human-centred development approach, validate the technology and to get expert guidance on how we can progress further. We can’t wait to see what learning opportunities lie ahead of us that can take Edicat to even greater heights.’

The winning team for ‘Solve for Tomorrow’, will be announced in July, following two rounds of judging by a panel of tech experts and entrepreneurs, including Head of Tech Innovation at Samsung Electronics R&D Institute UK Kit Lam, Deputy Head of Office at Samsung Design Europe Hong Yeo, Digital Catapult Non-Executive Director and Venture Partner at Merian Ventures Priya Guha, and Edward Evans, CEO of Social Tech Trust.