Two postgraduate students at the Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI), Yu Ziyue and He Lihua, won the award for the best student paper presented at the 6th International Conference on the Internet of Things, Big Data and Security, the institute says.

The students, both PhD candidates, wrote a paper entitled “Deep Learning for COVID-19 Prediction based on Blood Test”, which proposed four hybrid deep-learning models which were then applied to data collected at the Albert Einstein Israeli Hospital in Brazil, according to a written statement issued by the MPI.

The institute says the results of their research can help in predicting COVID-19 infection effectively and accurately, and that it expects their findings to be used extensively to counter the pandemic.

The conference drew together in April researchers all over the world to discuss matters to do with Internet of Things technology and big data collected using such technology, the MPI says.