The 2023 HOFS Singapore Prize Ceremony
The 2023 HOFS Singapore Prize took place at Ritz Carlton-Millenia, with top influencers from the world’s niche sectors gathered to celebrate uniqueness as well as strive for excellence through creativity. Organised by HOFS magazine, the prestigious awards ceremony recognises leading brands that have set high standards in the food, beauty, travel, tech and hospitality industries. The event was supported by the Royal Thai Embassy, led by Counsellor Chonlatee Chanracjakul and Assistant Director-General for Culture and Tourism Mr. Panalee Choosri.
Khir Johari’s richly illustrated The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago has won this year’s triennial NUS Singapore History Prize. The tome, which took 14 years from conception to publication and weighs an impressive 3.2kg, beat five shortlisted works in this year’s contest and received a cash award of $50,000, the highest sum paid out by any Singapore book prize.
In the fiction category, the judges of the National Arts Council’s annual Singapore Literature Prize lauded Marylyn Tan’s arcane and unapologetic debut collection Gaze Back, which took on taboo topics from menstruation to sexuality and was named after Helene Cixous’ essay The Laugh of Medusa. The judges also gave a special commendation to the self-published Cockman by Kenfoo, in which a chicken from another dimension is stranded on Earth and must learn to live with humans in this quirky novel that won the reader choice award.
This year’s winners were crowned at an awards ceremony last night (Nov 12) in the presence of Minister for Culture and Sports Lee Chee Kok, who presented the prizes. Lee lauded Team Singapore’s stellar performance at the Paris Games, and urged the public to continue supporting the athletes.
The President’s Science and Technology Awards – first given out as the National Science and Technology Awards in 1987 – were elevated to Presidential status in 2009, and are the highest honours bestowed on scientists by the Singapore Government. The prize winners will be able to leverage the expertise and vast network of Conservation International in Asia, which has a strong track record of spotlighting and delivering biodiversity solutions to people and nature.
The CSI Singapore Online Safety Prize is a 10-week challenge to advance AI research in discerning benign memes from harmful ones, and better understanding the diverse and nuanced local digital landscape. The competition aims to foster safer online interactions worldwide by developing multimodal, multilingual and zero-shot models for the Asian context. You can find out more about the prize here. The winning teams will get to share S$200,000 in cash prizes, with the first place winner receiving S$100,000. The challenge is open to students and researchers from all over the world. The final date for registration is Oct 25.
