Recently, the 2023 “Challenge Cup” Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition for Beijing university and college students came to a successful close. CUEB representative teams won 1 grand prize, 7 first prizes, 19 second prizes and 23 third prizes, including 2 first prizes, 6 second prizes and 7 third prizes for the main competitions. Project number 310728 secured the grand prize in Rural Revitalization Special Competition, being one of the best candidates to undertake key research projects.

The Youth League Committee of CUEB launched the “Challenge Cup” Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Tryout in CUEB in September 2022 to cherry-pick excellent projects to participate in the “Challenge Cup” at the municipal level and to fully display the students’ achievements in innovation and social practice. All colleges were engaged in promoting and organizing the Tryout, releasing an introduction post on WeChat so as to inform students of this competition immediately. As such, more than 300 teams and over 2,000 students were mobilized to participate in the preliminary competition.

To get projects started, the Youth League Committee of CUEB cooperated with all colleges to organize a number of lectures for competition introduction, topic selection guidance and report writing, improving students’ academic research and social practice abilities. To evaluate projects from the Tryout in CUEB, a judging panel, consisting of multiple experienced competition experts and scholars in related fields, was invited to evaluate all the works, select 8 top ones to compete at the municipal level, and give their valuable suggestions for further polishing.

Before oral defense, the 8 teams received one-to-one advice from the Youth League Committee of CUEB, who helped them to figure out the logic of their projects, optimize materials for presentation and write defense scripts. In addition, a mock show was held the day before the official defense to help these students get familiar with the process and test the equipment. In the final defense, each team member, with calmness and cooperation, fully showed the competence and spirit of CUEBers.

The “Challenge Cup” series competition is a leading national event, jointly organized 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, and the All-China Students’ Federation. Since the first competition held in 1989, the “Challenge Cup” series competition has adhered to the founding tenet of “advocating science, pursuing truth, studying diligently, innovating boldly, and embracing challenges”, making significant impacts on universities, colleges and beyond. Thus, it is also known as the “Olympics” of scientific and technological innovation for contemporary university and college students.