Yunnan University teams help firms solve tech bottlenecks

An open contest – selecting the best work from the 18th "Challenge Cup" National College Students' Extracurricular Academic Sci-tech Works Competition – was held at Guizhou University on Sept 16-17. Yunnan University students participated for the first time and won a special prize, a first prize and a second prize.

Nearly 2,000 works nationwide were up to be judged during the event and more than 700 works from over 230 colleges and universities were selected for the final.

The event focused on technical bottlenecks and the needs put forward by enterprises and participating teams were required to propose solutions.

Yunnan University won the special prize for a smart greenhouse for the precise cultivation and control of rice, based on solar power and hydropower generation.

It won the first prize for a project paving the way for a stable employment path for graduates with employment difficulties in universities in remote regions.

The university won the second prize for the research and application of a quantum neural network, to solve image recognition problems and quantum annealing algorithms to solve combinatorial optimization problems.