At the recent CTB National Forum in Beijing, two Grade 11 students from Fettes College Guangzhou, Amelia Kou and Nicole Qu, received the Regional First Prize for their project, A Nebuliser Doll with a Heartbeat.

More than a science and technology project, it represents a thoughtful exploration of how education can respond to the whole person.

During an examination period, Amelia noticed that she often turned to food to relieve stress.

“I started wondering whether it was more than just hunger,” she recalled.

Together with Nicole, who had experienced something similar, she began researching the issue and discovered the concept of emotional eating. While it is not an eating disorder and does not necessarily reach a clinical level, it can still cause discomfort and anxiety.

“When teenagers talk to their parents about it, the usual response is, ‘You’re just craving food,’” said Amelia. “Many adults don’t realise it can be linked to emotional wellbeing.”

To better understand the issue, Amelia and Nicole distributed more than 200 online questionnaires to young people aged 12 to 24.

The findings showed that more than 60% of respondents had experienced emotional eating.

This is neither binge eating nor simple overeating. It is often an emotional response to stress and anxiety that frequently goes unnoticed. When adults dismiss it as a bad habit, they may overlook the emotional needs behind the behaviour.

Rather than focusing only on their own experiences, Amelia and Nicole turned a personal concern into a wider conversation. Their work reflects one of the values encouraged at Fettes College Guangzhou: education should not be separate from real life, but should help students engage with the challenges around them.

The students wanted to make emotional eating easier for others to understand, so they created a short film to visualise the issue.

“We spent a whole day filming it,” they said. Having previously won first prize in the school’s short film competition, they were already familiar with the process.

Their original idea was simply a nebuliser. However, they soon realised that traditional medical devices can feel cold and clinical.

“We wanted something that teenagers would feel comfortable carrying and using,” they explained.

Inspired by the popularity of character dolls among young people, they redesigned the product as a soft toy with emotional support functions.

The design went through several versions. Initially more realistic in appearance, it gradually evolved into a friendlier cartoon-style character.

“Amelia drew many versions, and I kept suggesting changes,” Nicole said. “We spent a lot of time discussing and refining it together.”

The final character was named Lula. Amelia and Nicole also created an entire fictional world called Lululale.

In the story, Lula is a brave girl who struggles with emotional eating. With help from magical herbal spirits, she learns to make peace with the food monsters she encounters on her journey.

Their support project extends beyond the product itself. Amelia also built the Lululale website, where visitors can explore Lula’s story, watch the short film, and learn more about emotional wellbeing.

Through this growing character universe, the students hope to build emotional connections with young people facing similar challenges.

Combining artistic creativity with scientific research, Amelia and Nicole transformed the idea of treatment into one of companionship. When the user’s heart rate rises above a set threshold, the doll releases a calming mist, offering not only physical comfort but also a quiet message: “You are not alone.”

What makes the project particularly impressive is that it combines psychology, traditional Chinese medicine, chemistry, programming and hardware development — all undertaken by two students who began with little prior experience.

Neither of them had studied hardware engineering before, so they learned through the Arduino platform, building their understanding from the ground up.

They had no background in medicinal chemistry either, so they visited hospitals and spent long hours in laboratories extracting herbal distillates.

To understand the relationship between anxiety and heart rate, they also reviewed academic research and the relevant medical literature.

Their experience reflects an important lesson for the age of artificial intelligence: information may be easy to access, but the ability to solve complex problems remains a deeply human skill.

At Fettes College Guangzhou, students are encouraged not only to absorb knowledge but also to develop the confidence to navigate uncertainty.

As Amelia and Nicole admitted, the website was far from perfect at the beginning, and writing the research paper was challenging. Yet it was precisely those difficult moments that helped them grow.

In the school’s chemistry laboratory, they extracted herbal distillates for use in the nebuliser.

“Each experiment took at least four hours and produced only a few millilitres of usable material,” they said.

After three weeks of testing, they finally developed a formula suitable for the project.

Once the prototype was completed, they invited teenagers with similar tendencies toward emotional eating to test it.

After one week of use, participants gave the product an average recommendation score of 8.15 out of 10.