Recently, students from ZJUI showcased their interdisciplinary and innovative thinking and blazed their way through a myriad of challenges, winning one Gold Award and one Bronze Award in the International Session of the 8th Zhejiang International College Students' "Internet+" Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition.
In the afternoon of July 30, 2022, the closing and award ceremony of the 8th Zhejiang International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was held at the Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, putting a period to the five-month long competition. Zhejiang University was designated “Excellent Organization Award” and won 16 Gold Awards. ZJUI student LIU Qianqi from Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2024, along with his teammates HU Jiajun, LI Zhanpeng, WU Feiyang, and ZHANG Zhibo won a Gold Award with their “Biothinker Sample Preparation Workstations.” SU Chang, LIN Ziyi, GUO Shuhan, ZHOU Jincheng and RUAN Yucheng won a Bronze Award with the “YunLianZhiFang-A Blockchain Education Integrated Service Platform” established by students from College of Computer Science and Technology.
LIU Qianqi, leader of the awarded team, said, “The biggest challenge was our busy schedule at the early stage of our project. The material submission deadline was unfortunately during our final examination period. However, all our team members sacrificed their free time, even working overnight to test models and collect materials.” The teammates have never worked as a team in such a multi-disciplinary and effortdemanding project. However, with their winning mentality and teamwork spirit, they managed to blaze through their challenges. “It was very difficult to coordinate our work since we have so many people on the team. Luckily, we have Date: 05/08/2022 Article: Research Group of Dr. QIAN Chao Photo: Research Group of Dr. QIAN Chao encountered similar circumstances that required teamwork, project-management and time-management skills during our previous ZJUI courses,” said LIU Qianqi.
When asked if ZJUI courses had been of any help, Liu answered “Nearly all the important innovations and breakthroughs in our project are inspired by ZJUI courses. What we learned from Computer-aided Design courses made our models theoretically possible. What we learned from our Design for Manufacturability courses helped us understand the process of designing a product, including understanding the market, background research, drafting of our design, computer-aided design and building models. They also cultivated our ability in analyzing the cost, competitive products, patent, and in building models, which were all crucial checkpoints for grading in the competition. Meanwhile, the English teaching environment at the International Campus made it possible for us to smoothly read the English patents, technical documents, and papers of foreign competing products, and quickly understand the cutting-edge technology of the industry.
“This project comprehensively demonstrated the uniqueness and superiority of the interdisciplinary teaching at the International Campus, showcasing the dynamic cooperation among the three institutes and the infinite possibilities of interdisciplinary innovation,” said Assistant Prof. HU Huan, instructor of the gold team and researcher at ZJUI. He believes that with the cooperation of different units at the International Campus, more outstanding entrepreneurial achievements will emerge in the future.
As Assist. Prof. HU Huan said, the full support of the entire campus, and the perseverance to overcome difficulties have cultivated excellent projects with cross-disciplinary innovation demonstrating the combination of production, education, and research.
This competition is hosted by the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province, the Youth League Committee of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang Association for Science and Technology, and The Students’ Federation of Zhejiang Province, organized by Zhejiang Sci-Tech University and China Construction Bank Zhejiang Branch, and co-organized by Zhejiang University of Science and Technology. A total of 359 thousand people from 125 schools submitted 46.5 thousand entries since the competition began in March. More than 5500 people from 124 countries or regions submitted 1536 entries in the International Session.
