THE NEXT EDISON (or Elon) may well be in China this week. The world’s largest competition for young inventors has been underway in the country—and came to a climax last night (Tuesday 15 Oct 2024).
Hundreds of finalists were in Shanghai for the finals of the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition.
It’s a big deal: between 2017 and 2023, more than 30,000 international projects and 90,000 international college students from over 150 countries and regions participated—and that includes entries from famous western universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as MIT) and Cambridge from the UK.
To that list, tens of thousands more projects and students have been added to the books this year. There has been a five-month period of collecting entries, out of which about 1,400 projects were shortlisted for a live competition in front of judges. Contestants had to be aged 35 or under.
The final live competition was held at the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Jiaotong University last night.
The mantra given to participants is: “I dare to break through and I will create”.
But the focus is not on creating glamorous apps, but on building practical, serious products that are good for society.
So, for example, a project called “New Generation of Aviation Engine Blade Multi-process Composite Processing Anti-Fatigue Manufacturing Technology” won good marks for the University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB).
Participants say that winning projects often get commercial backing and turn into successful businesses, too. One waste-handling project which was praised in the competition in the past, and was made reality last year: a production line designed to consume industrial solid waste in bulk amounts.
“Since it was put into production in 2023, it has been digested more than 450,000 tons of industrial solid waste,” said a spokesman for USTB.
Yet that doesn’t mean that all the projects are esoteric pieces of machinery developed in labs—one of the projects was a system designed to enhance the growth of girls football in rural areas of the country.
The students remarked that it was good to get out of the labs and meet others. “Scientific research is a process of continuous innovation, and innovation cannot be made behind closed doors,” Jin Yufei, from Shanghai Jiaotong University, told a reporter. He is working on a unique “sea and air integration cross-domain navigation vehicle platform”.
Reporter Zhang Xin, working for Shedun News, said he was impressed by the range of participating projects, which ranged from major scientific breakthroughs to practical innovations to solve problems.
One team developed a gel that had a remarkable effect on medical pain points, while another saw themselves as ecological beauticians working on grassland plateaus.
China has advanced remarkably in the ranks of global academia, and this competition shows why. Students can’t just go into their labs and experiment. They have to publish papers with themselves as primary author, and have to be in contact with the industries they serve, so as to make sure their works have scientific and practical value.
Images by Jiatong University.