EMMA YANG

Born in Hong Kong, Emma began coding when she was six years old, making small games
and animations. In the few short years since then she has developed a serious specialism in
computer science and become a top social entrepreneur, engineer and developer. However, it
is through her startup app, Timeless, that Emma is making the biggest difference to the lives
of ordinary people.

Emma has won various awards for the Timeless app, including the 2017 MIT Solve Brain
Health Challenge, the 2018 Women Startup Challenge Grand Prize (out of 300 women-led
startups in the US), and the 2020 SupChina NextGen Female Rising Star Award.
Academically, she is a World Science Scholar (1 of 30 exceptionally talented mathematical
students in the world), winner of the National Merit Scholarship (top 0.5% of 1.5 million
entrants), and a recipient of the Equitable Excellence Scholarship. She has also performed
three times at Carnegie Hall and achieved Top 3 places at several national and international
piano competitions.

Q. How did your grandmother inspire you to develop an app for people with Alzheimer’s?
My personal experiences with my grandmother are what inspired me to create Timeless. Having
grown up with her, I have felt first-hand how the illness can affect not only the patient, but the family,
friends and caregivers of the patient as well. I noticed that my grandma’s ability to recognize loved
ones and her daily life was greatly impacted by the disease.
As my grandma’s disease progressed, I wanted to find a tool that helped to address these common
difficulties faced by Alzheimer’s patients. I thought such a tool must have existed because of the scale
of the disease. Unfortunately, I was not able to find an app that could help my grandmother live a
better daily life. This inspired me to develop my own app that could help my grandmother stay
connected with my family.

Q. What kind of research on Alzheimer’s did you do?

While Timeless drew on my experiences with my grandmother, I also did research to support my
hypothesis: Can a mobile app help the elderly, even Alzheimer’s patients?
I read publications by Alzheimer’s experts and reached out to Alzheimer’s specialists in my area who
could give me guidance and feedback on Timeless. That was how I found my advisor, Dr. Melissa
Kramps. As it turned out, there is a lot of research that suggests stimulating one’s memory and
socializing, especially through looking at photos and staying engaged with loved ones, can help slow
down cognitive decline. These findings supported my idea to develop Timeless.

TIMELESS
Timeless is a first-of-its-kind, simple, easy to use app for Alzheimer’s patients to remember events,
stay connected and engaged with friends and family, and to recognize people through artificial
intelligence-based facial recognition technology.

How it works
Timeless is a first-of-its-kind, simple, easy to use app for Alzheimer’s patients to remember events,
stay connected and engaged with friends and family, and to recognize people through artificial
intelligence-based facial recognition technology.

Q. What are some of the features that the Timeless app offers?
Alzheimer’s patients oftentimes will have problems remembering events, and the names and faces of
friends and relatives. Timeless addresses all of those difficulties in one single tool.
Timeless has four key functions:
Updates: provides patients a regular feed of photos that are contributed by their circle of friends. The
people in the photos are tagged with names and relationship to the patients using AI-based facial
recognition technology.
Today: provides reminder of the day’s activities to help patients effectively manage their daily lives.
Contact: is a picture phone book that helps patients contact their loved ones without remembering
their phone number.
Identify: allows patients to use the phone’s camera to identify the person standing in front them using
AI-based facial recognition technology. The goal of Timeless is to empower Alzheimer’s patients to
live a better daily life.

BY – ZAHAAN Z