Last week, on the 29th of October 2025, our co-founder, Lester Goh was invited to speak at the Kyoto Institute of Technology's KYOTO Design Lab to an audience of Graduate, Master and undergraduate students from KIT and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).
Both universities collaborate annually on a joint exchange program, with this year's theme being revitalization and renewal of urban landscapes amidst the backdrop of Japan's aging population and gradual rural depopulation. This is very much the expertise of AKIYA2.0, and our co-founder and SUTD alumnus Lester Goh gave a talk to the crowd about how AKIYA2.0 is an actual thesis-in-progress that tackles this problem outside the confines of academia.
AKIYA2.0 would like to thank Professor Erwin Viray and Assistant Professor Peter Ortner from SUTD, Professor Ohta and Associate Professor Kiuchi from KIT for their warm invitation and discussion during the session. We are heartened to see that this important social-economic issue being actively discussed in educational circles and look forward to the progress of the students and researchers work in this area.