Han Ximin 1824295095@qq.com A TOTAL of 28 winning projects shared prizes worth 3.6 million yuan (US$557,280) from the 2021 Shenzhen Dream Catcher Cup University Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Contest that officially concluded at a ceremony at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian District yesterday. The contest, co-organized by the Shenzhen Municipal Human Resources and Social Security Bureau, Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau and Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, was divided into categories for graduates and on-campus students. In the graduate category, the project Lasense — Sensing the Gas World Precisely through Laser won the top prize of 500,000 yuan. The project can simultaneously collect real-time information of different gases and their densities and provide highly sensitive and multiple compound gases online sensor system for industrial customers. Team leader Xu Ke is a doctoral degree holder from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, while two other core members are returned overseas students. The project has settled in Qianhai’s E-hub. In the on-campus student category, a gesture-based interaction system developed by a team of Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) won the top prize. The project is dedicated to solving information exchanges among hearing-impaired individuals through gesture-controlled portable AI wearables. Seven universities including Shenzhen University, Sun Yat-sen University (Shenzhen), SUSTech, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen Technology University and Shenzhen Polytechnic also won prizes in different subcategories. A total of 348 entrepreneurial projects signed up for the Dream Catcher Cup contest since it was launched in April. They were mainly from the internet, computer and biopharmacy sectors, fitting in the development orientation of the city’s high technologies. “Among the 14 winners in the graduate category, seven were graduates from the Chinese mainland and seven were from overseas. Two of the three projects from Hong Kong and Macao universities won prizes, showing how attractive Shenzhen’s business and entrepreneurship environments are to overseas graduates,” said Zhang Hong, director of the Shenzhen Public Employment Service Center. In the five years since the contest’s inception, the organizers had given out 15.55 million yuan in prizes to 143 winning projects. | 