The Ministry of Education has recently released the official award list of the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (2023). A student team from the School of Materials Science and Engineering secured a national bronze prize with their project High-Temperature Cast Armor: Magnesia-Carbon Refractories, the Guardian for Clean Steel Production. Team members include Li Zengyi, Tan Haobo, Nie Ling, Bai Qiaofang and Li Siting, with Dr. Chen Yang serving as the project supervisor.

After eight months of intensive refinement and over 40 rounds of project revision, the team competed through successive rounds including school-level trials, institutional preliminaries, online evaluations and provincial contests. Standing out against 409 finalists advancing to the national on-site competition, the project claimed the national bronze honor.

The School of Materials Science and Engineering attaches great importance to innovation and entrepreneurship education for undergraduates by integrating such training into the whole talent cultivation system. Centered on the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition (formerly the “Internet+” Competition) and oriented toward cultivating application-oriented talents and serving local economic development, the school consistently implements the development philosophy of boosting teaching, learning and innovation via competitions. It deepens industry-innovation integration and university-enterprise cooperation to build an all-round innovation ecosystem combining entrepreneurship education, academic research, hands-on practice and social services, so as to sharpen students’ innovative and entrepreneurial competencies and accelerate the training of high-caliber innovative and entrepreneurial talents.