Zhang Qian

    zhqcindy@163.com

    AN American team led by Shi Wendian, a contestant in a global innovation contest, won first prize with their biology and bioscience project in Longgang District on Friday.

    Twenty-four projects competed. They were selected after five preliminaries in Sydney in Australia, Munich in Germany, Tel Aviv in Israel, Tokyo in Japan and Silicon Valley in the United States.

    Shi’s team’s project, CytoChip, streamlines blood test, making it as simple as measuring one’s temperature.

    Blood tests are time-consuming and complicated. Shi’s team wants to bring the process down to two minutes using only a drop of blood from the fingertip.

    The team won the highest marks when they presented during the first round and kept first place throughout the final competition Friday. Shi and his team will get a prize of US$880,000.

    Shi has a doctorate degree in electronic engineering from the California Institute of Technology. The team specializes in inventing new ways to diagnose diseases using affordable equipment. They focus on selling to poorer areas of the world.

    The blood testing equipment already has multiple international patents.

    Some winning projects recognized by the organizers of the 14th Conference on the International Exchange of Professionals (CIEP) will get investment from a pool of US$100 million, which was put forward by 56 venture capital companies in Shenzhen.

    Three teams, including George Kopsidas’ team from Australia, Shao Xiaowei’s team from Japan and Timor Median’s team from Israel, won second-place prizes in the final. Each team will be awarded US$50,000.

    Another four teams from Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Silicon Valley and Sydney won the third-place prizes with US$30,000 for each team. Six of the top 10 projects were biology or bioscience projects.

    A signing ceremony was held at the Wuzhou Guest House in Futian District on Saturday. Representatives from the Science and Technology Innovation Bureau of Longgang District and several industrial parks signed cooperation deals with some of the winning teams. (Special reports on P2, 3)