On December 4, the finals of the 9th China International College Students' Innovation Competition (2023) concluded at Tianjin University. The project “Intelligent Elimination -- a multi-target and multi-scale plasma ablation surgery planning system” completed by Lu Qilin and Xue Jiaying from Class 2 of the Big Data management and applicationsmajor of theSAFTI Cohort2022 won the Silver Award in the Undergraduate Creativity Project of the international team. (It was the only international project from Guangdong Province that advanced to the on-site finals of the Competition.)

The China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (formerly the China International College Students’ “Internet+” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition) is the highest-level college students’ innovation and entrepreneurship event in China co-sponsored by 12 ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Education and provincial governments. It is held every year and is highly valued by the State Council. It aims to inherit and carry forward the revolutionary spirit, focus on the integration of innovation and entrepreneurship education practices into the “moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and labor education”, and inspire young students’ enthusiasm for innovation and creation. A total of 17.09 million students from 5,296 colleges in 151 participating countries and regions participated in the Competition with more than 4.21 million participating projects. A total of 1,260 projects made it into the national finals. The Competition hit a record high in the number of applicants and participating projects, with the global influence further enhanced. It has become the most influential mass entrepreneurship and innovation event accessible to all college students and universities across China.

The “Intelligent Elimination”, a multi-target and multi-scale plasma ablation surgery planning system, is a surgical system that combines software and hardware, sets up a deep learning-based throat medical imaging platform, and develops low-temperature plasma ablation medical devices by leveraging key technologies such as big data, AI diagnostics, and plasma ablation. The system can effectively improve the accuracy of doctors’ preoperative diagnosis and planning, efficiency of intraoperative operations, and accuracy in the postoperative simulation.

All members of the project team are from the Shenzhen Audencia Financial Technology Institute (SAFTI). Lu Qilin is a student from Class 2 of the Big Data management and applications major of the SAFTI Cohort 2022, a winner of the gold award in the national finals among the main tracks of the 9th China International College Students’ Innovation Competition, and the person in charge of the silver award-winning project among international projects (the University’s first winner of awards in the main track and the international track). Xue Jiaying, who is also from Class 2 of the Big Data management and applications major of the SAFTI Cohort 2022, is the recipient of the Audencia scholarship. In addition, some friends from the Huawei Smart Base Society of Shenzhen University offered help to the project team by providing solid technical support and sharing competition experience.

Let’s take a look at the stories and experiences shared by the project team.

Q: The China International College Students’ Innovation Competition lasted for half a year, which was a long time. What did you learn during the preparation and competition?

A: I didn’t know how to do this at the beginning, and the project was not initiated long enough. So, I never thought we could make it to the finals. However, with the continuous optimization of project materials and the gradual accumulation of professional knowledge, we made it to the national finals surprisingly. The Institute asked a foreign teacher to help us adjust our presentation decks, and that enabled us to learn the differences between Chinese and foreign reading habits. The Institute also asked faculty members of the Audencia Business School to endorse the project and guide us in road shows and project defense. It was really helpful.

Q:The competition requires teamwork. Is there anything that impressed you during this process?

A: To participate in this kind of comprehensive competition, students from different institutes and colleges need to work together, and it is a wonderful thing to fully leverage everyone’s professional knowledge. We used big data to analyze and interpret large amounts of data to identify trends, patterns, and anomalies. We learned the knowledge for junior students in advance and used big data to train a machine learning model to automate the decision-making process and identify complex patterns. There were a lot of things we didn’t understand at the beginning. But through continuous learning, we made full use of everyone’s expertise!

Q:The competition required a lot of effort. How did you balance your energy for the competition, study, and daily life?

A: The most important thing was to confirm whether we needed to participate in this competition. Blind participation would bring us nothing but pressure. The second priority was to have a proper attitude. Competition is something refreshing in addition to study and day-to-day life. I enjoyed collaborating with my teammates in developing technology and applying our achievements to the competition. Last but not least, we considered the competition as an opportunity to facilitate learning and think about how to integrate our professional knowledge into the project.

Q:It was impressive to learn that you are sophomores, as the competition was top-notch and challenging. Currently, most sophomore students are at sea. They want to participate in the competition, but they are worried about their abilities and cannot find suitable team members or projects with potential. What do you think of this problem?

A: In fact, everyone faces the challenge of inexperience at the beginning. In freshman year, we participated in competitions together with upper-class students to gain experience. Typically, when you join a new project team, team members will teach you what to do, so you don’t need to worry about it.

They also said:

There are many ways to find matched projects, such as the entrepreneurship park of Shenzhen University and some competition societies, etc. The FinTech program also has its brilliant projects! You can follow the project team recruitment information and don’t be afraid to apply for membership. (This is important because you must have confidence in yourself!) You can also communicate with experienced upper-class students to close the information gap.

Here is what they said about the future of the project:

“We will continue to work on the project while trying to explore innovations in other fields.”

“We hope that big data can empower medical diagnosis and we expect to apply FinTech knowledge into various industries!”

Experience gained from the competition

The China International College Students’ Innovation Competition is a highly recognized top-level international competition. Only students with degrees from foreign colleges are eligible to participate in its international project. Different from projects in the main track, an international project requires road shows and project defense presented in English, and it involves competition with contestants from top international universities such as the National University of Singapore and the Imperial College London. However, participants in the international track face less pressure in competition. It is both an opportunity and a challenge for us at the SAFTI. I hope more students from the SAFTI can participate in the competition and strive for a better result next year!