Tech
Galaxy
Award
tga.org
A new kind
of tech challenge.
The Tech Galaxy Award is more than a competition. It is where the next generation of scientists, designers, and policymakers begins. Hosted each summer in Singapore — a city famed for its smart infrastructure, multiethnic harmony, and strategic AI governance — TGA convenes teams of secondary school and university students from around the world for an immersive academic challenge.
Participants do not consume content. They construct knowledge, debate solutions, and simulate the work of urban planners, policymakers, technologists, and citizens. The work is mentored by faculty from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the University of Hong Kong (HKU), and the University of Cambridge.
In an age where most youth competitions reward templates and memorization, TGA prioritizes open-ended rigor, systems literacy, and ethical imagination. It bridges secondary education and future leadership.
Read our philosophy
By 2050, more than 6.7 billion people — over two-thirds of humanity — will live in urban areas. According to UN-Habitat, cities will generate 80% of global GDP yet consume over 75% of all natural resources. Urban problems will no longer be local; they will define global well-being.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is reshaping public policy, healthcare, mobility, housing, and civic engagement. Yet UNESCO warns that fewer than 10% of global students receive structured education in AI ethics and systems thinking during their secondary years.
TGA confronts this gap head-on. It does not isolate AI as a coding skill. It embeds AI inside real, messy, human contexts — traffic congestion, pollution hotspots, youth isolation, gentrification — and asks: how might AI make our communities more just, not just more efficient?
— AI literacy not as a tool, but as a worldview.
— Urban design not as infrastructure, but as justice.
— Education not as memorization, but as agency.
— Cities not as buildings, but as ecosystems of values.
The Challenge is a microcosm of future leadership. It positions students not as future users of technology, but as current co-designers of tomorrow's society.
Backed by the OECD Learning Compass 2030, UN SDG 11, the WEF AI Literacy for Youth framework, and Singapore's Smart Nation blueprint. Every participant is aligned with global competencies — and prepared to make a real-world difference.
The Galaxy
Eight distinct honors. Every team finds its place in the constellation. The TGA Galaxy is engineered so that excellence is recognized in many forms — not only the single champion, but the most rigorous reasoning, the most generous collaborator, and the project that surprised the judges.
See all eight sub-awards
Polaris Award
The brightest star in our galaxy — the single most rigorous, original, and ethically grounded project of the year.
North Star
The champion team — the cohort that best embodied TGA's vision of justice, rigor, and design.
Rising Star
The newcomer who arrived quietly and left a mark — exceptional growth across the cohort week.
Supernova
The project the judges did not expect — disruptive thinking, with sound reasoning to back it.
Binary Star
Two minds, one orbit — for the pair whose collaboration produced more than the sum of its parts.
Constellation
The team whose role design and integration were textbook — every member visible, every role essential.
An immersive
cohort.
TGA is an immersive in-person cohort. Teams move through problem framing, research synthesis, applied AI reasoning, design prototyping, and a live academic defense — all under real-world constraints and authentic faculty mentorship.
Read the full format- Eligibility: Secondary school & university students
- Team size: 8 students
- Language: English (working proficiency)
- Host location: Singapore · Tier-1 university campus
- Format: Project-based immersion
- Faculty: NUS · NTU · HKU · Cambridge
Voices from
the galaxy.
"I now understand the structure of a city — not just the buildings, but the systems."
— Polaris Award recipient, 2024 cohort
"When they asked us 'Why does this AI matter to people who aren't you?' — that changed how I saw design."
— Rising Star recipient, 2024 cohort
"The faculty didn't ask if our idea worked. They asked: why should it exist?"
— Supernova recipient, 2024 cohort
The field, the questions, the record.
Before you apply, know where TGA sits, what we actually answer, and how a certificate is checked. None of these pages is a brochure for another organisation's medal.
The Field
SSEF and Regeneron ISEF 2026 in Phoenix (9–15 May), iGEM's Paris Jamboree (13–16 Nov 2026; 4,600+ participants in 2025), the James Dyson Award, Imagine Cup, the World Scholar’s Cup, and urban challenges generally — and the place TGA occupies beside them, not inside them.
Read the landscapeFAQ
Eligibility, the eight-person team, English, bursaries, safeguarding, what the defense is, and what we are not affiliated with. The long version lives on its own page; a short set remains on Contact.
Read the FAQVerify a certificate
Every participant receives a TGA-CERT identity. Type the code to confirm holder, year, and honors. The explainer sits at Certificates; the machine sits here.
Verify a certificate
Begin your team's
journey.
Applications for the next TGA cohort open each September. Schools, learning centers, and independent teams of eight are welcome to apply. Every participant receives a TGA-CERT ID — a verifiable record of their work in our galaxy.
Register a team Verify a certificate