Scholarships pave way to social impact
Jarinyagon Chantawannnakul finds fulfilment in creating impact through innovation
11 February 2026
When Jarinyagon Chantawannnakul first arrived at CUHK from Thailand in 2021, she had a hard time settling in. The pace, the people and the language were all unfamiliar. But with deep intellectual curiosity and a sense of mission to make an impact, the Biomedical Engineering student gradually discovered an environment that challenged, encouraged and empowered her to pursue the path of an innovator while at the same time volunteering with the local Thai community to preserve and promote their culture.
Five years on, Jarinyagon has been named Most Distinguished Graduating Student 2024-25 of CUHK’s Wu Yee Sun (WYS) College, one of two to receive the award.
Rough start
The young Thai has come a long way since she left home in the historic city of Phitsanulok, northern Thailand, to live in vibrant Hong Kong as a non-local student. The new life was anything but smooth sailing in the beginning. “I only spoke Thai and a little English at the time and Hong Kong was totally new to me,” she recalls. “I had scholarships to cover tuition and some expenses, but the cost of living was four times higher than in Thailand! I needed to do part-time jobs to survive.”
She found work as a laboratory research assistant at Prince of Wales Hospital, CUHK’s main teaching hospital, and as an online tutor for Thai students. Nighttime offered the only window she could devote herself to university course revisions and English learning.
Soon, she found herself buried in juggling multiple jobs and studying late into the night, a routine that hardly gave her any fulfilment. “Chasing money made me feel empty,” she says. That realisation became a turning point for her to seek meaning through service to others.
During the summer of 2022, Jarinyagon returned to her hometown and volunteered as a pharmacy assistant at a public hospital, which was understaffed amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “My duties included packing medicines for patients and preparing injections for doctors. I felt happy because my work genuinely helped people.”
Back at CUHK after the break, she kept up the momentum of volunteering, taking on roles as a beach cleaner with nonprofit ThinkOcean’s CUHK chapter, and as a student ambassador at the Department of Biomedical Engineering helping with departmental events. Through the Orbis Future Vision Leaders Program, she and her peers set up experiential booths on campus, inviting students to use blindfolds and augmented reality devices to imagine themselves living with visual impairment.
These experiences restored balance to her life and anchored her long-term aspirations: to improve living standards and health-care access for all.
Aspirations and impact through innovation
“I have always been interested in instruments I can see working, rather than medicine, where mechanisms are hidden,” says Jarinyagon. She was inspired during a biomedical seminar, where she realised the potential of biomedical instrumentation to make medical equipment more accessible.
Between her third and fourth years in CUHK, she participated in a two-month research exchange at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. The clinicians who hosted her group highlighted a persistent problem: it was very difficult to locate veins on the wrists of infants, toddlers and obese patients, and therefore challenging to administer medications and fluids and collect blood samples. The typical solution is an infrared vein-finder device which can cost more than HK$15,000, a daunting sum to health-care providers in low-income communities.
After much research, Jarinyagon came up with a plan to make vein-finding more affordable. She found that, by using artificial intelligence to detect and enhance images, she could conceptualise a device that reduced costs to around HK$5,000. Encouraged by Professor Scott Yuan Wu of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, she developed the concept into her final-year project.
The idea matured into DUALVein, a MedTech start-up in development with support from the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) Ideation Programme. “Pitching forced me to articulate not only the technical challenges but also the commercial potential,” she says. “The business side was totally new to me, so I joined networking events to meet people from venture capital and learn from them.”
At the same time, she channelled her energies into a society-facing campaign, which was her final-year project at WYS College. The initiative attracted CUHK students from Bangladesh, Myanmar and Thailand to support the Thai community in Kowloon City, an area known as “Hong Kong’s Little Thai Town”, by setting out to raise awareness among younger Hongkongers, many of whom had never visited the district before, even as it was already undergoing redevelopment.
The team ran a pop-up store at WYS College to introduce signature Thai dishes such as mango sticky rice and papaya salad. It also organised cultural activities including guided tours to small Thai shops and restaurants, and held a lucky draw. The activities encouraged community spending by allowing customers with receipts from the neighbourhood’s businesses to join in.
“We focused on small businesses,” Jarinyagon says with a smile. “Owners told us our efforts really helped.” The project did not just bring visibility to the local Thai community, but also boosted business and fostered cultural exchange.
Jarinyagon’s journey reflects WYS College’s motto, “Scholarship and Perseverance”. “Scholarship has driven me to excel academically and pursue knowledge relentlessly, while perseverance has enabled me to overcome challenges, balance multiple responsibilities and strive for excellence.” She foresees that her service to communities in need will continue unabated, not least by leveraging her biomedical engineering knowledge to develop accessible medical equipment in Asia.
By Eva Choy
Photos by Yau Hung-kee (top photo), courtesy of interviewee
