On March 19, the 13th Challenge Cup Chinese Undergraduates Entrepreneurship Plan Competition, sponsored by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the China Association for Science and Technology, the All-China Students’ Federation, and the People's Government of Beijing Municipality, under the organization of Beijing Institute of Technology, the Communist Youth League Beijing Municipal Committee, and the Fangshan District People's Government of Beijing, ended in Beijing. The undergraduate entrepreneurship programs, represented by “Human Body Patch that Retreats when it Succeeds - Biodegradable Zinc Ally” of Sun Lu from the School of Materials Science and Engineering and “Digital Twin Intelligent Technology - Top Domestic Providers of Intelligent Optimization and Decision-making Solutions for Digital Twin Process Industry Indicators” of Zhang Kesheng from the School of Information Science and Engineering, have been highly recognized and commented by national experts with a solid practical process, rich practical achievements and enormous social and market prospects. They have achieved excellent results of 2 gold medals, 2 silver medals, and 2 copper medals, breaking the historical record of 1 gold medal, 1 silver medal, and 4 copper medals in 2020. Moreover, it was the second time for them to win Champion Cup of the competition since the first one in 2020.
The Challenge Cup series competitions, co-sponsored by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, the China Association for Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the All-China Students’ Federation, and local provincial governments, are known as the Olympics for Chinese college students' technological innovation and entrepreneurship, which are currently the most popular national competition that domestic college students most concerned. It plays a great representative, authoritative, demonstrating, and guiding role. The Challenge Cup series are divided into the Challenge Cup National Undergraduates Extracurricular Academic and Technological Works Competition, which is referred to as Big Challenge, and the Challenge Cup Chinese College Students Entrepreneurship Plan Competition, which is abbreviated as Small Challenge. The Big Challenge was initiated by the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League in 1999 that is held every two years. So far, it has been successfully held for 13 times, making it one of the most concerned national entrepreneurship competitions for domestic college students. It is an important national scientific and technological innovation competition in the Ranking List of National College Student Competitions of the China Association of Higher Education, as well as one of the three highest 7-star competitions recognized by NEU's Star Classification Table of Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Competitions for NEU Students.
Since NEU attaches great importance to participating in the Challenge Cup series, it launched a campus-wide competition for the Challenge Cup early in January 2022 in accordance with the principle of early preparation, wide selection, and emphasis on cultivation. During the preparation, the Youth League Committee and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship College of the University worked together to focus on soil cultivation and atmosphere creation in the form of NEU 2022 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition and NEU Innovation and Entrepreneurship Demonstration Base Construction Plan; 22 projects were selected and incubated in the form of the Golden Seed Project, and 15 intensive training sessions were conducted under the name of Alchemy Training Camp with emphasis placed on guiding students to deeply participate in practice and achieve social value. Eventually, a total of 1,337 projects and 5,940 participants were attracted, who were from different colleges with a full coverage. In the provincial competition, NEU ranked first in the number of gold medals and won the Challenge Cup of the provincial competition with excellent results of 15 gold medals (accounting for 7.4% of the total number of gold medals), 7 silver medals, 4 copper medals, and 6 recommended programs for the national competition.
