Han Ximin

ximhan@126.com

A RESEARCH project on antibacterial peptide, which can maintain the freshness of fruits and vegetables and prevent them from decaying during transportation and storage, earned 500,000 yuan (US$70,790) in awards at the 2019 Dream Catcher Cup University Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Contest that ended recently.

The fermentation skills developed by Chen Yuzhe, a doctoral degree holder, and her team, can extend the period of freshness for vegetables and fruits by 4 to 12 percent.

At the awards ceremony at Shenzhen Talent Park, the project, along with another 29 student projects, shared a total of 3.6 million yuan in awards that was distributed across the different levels.

The annual contest, running into its fourth year, was started by Shenzhen Public Employment Service Center in April and attracted 397 projects.

Students who have registered startups or who aspire to start their own businesses and live on-campus at Shenzhen colleges or have graduated in the past five years are eligible to apply.

Most of the projects mainly involve the bio-pharmacy, new materials and Internet sectors. Among the winners, 12 projects are from the bio-pharmacy sector, accounting for 40 percent of all the winning projects. The project winners generally have master’s degrees or above.

Because the organizer canceled hukou restrictions this year, some young people from Hong Kong and Macao entered the contest, and two of them won prizes.

Launched in 2016, the contest has become a well-known program for student entrepreneurship. In the past four years, it received applications from more than 1,400 innovation teams and gave out 12.3 million yuan to winning projects.

The winners this year will participate in a promotional meeting for startup projects in the Pearl River Delta area. The organizer will work out incentives, such as loans and financing matching, to support the industrialization of the projects.