Two teams formed by postgraduate students from the University of Macau’s (UM) Institute of Chinese Medical Sciences (ICMS), received a second prize and a third prize, respectively, at the Challenge Cup, a national competition in extracurricular high-tech projects for college students.
Held at Shanghai University, the competition attracted 1,230 entries from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan. One of the UM teams, led by Assistant Professor Wang Chunming, received a second prize for a new type of wound dressing they developed from Chinese medicines that can effectively heal stubborn wounds. The other UM team, led by ICMS Director Wang Yitao and Wang Shengpeng, received a third prize for a new type of sun spray with Chinese medicines as its main ingredients.
Since its founding in 2003, the ICMS has achieved impressive results in producing innovative graduates, as reflected in the number of prizes its students have received at the Challenge Cup over the past 15 years, including first prizes (four times), second prizes (six times), and third prizes (five times). The institute’s success is inextricably linked to its policy to train innovative researchers and to promote collaboration with the industry for technology transfer. The per capita number of papers published by ICMS members in SCI-indexed journals as principal investigators was 8.6 in 2016, with each paper’s average citation frequency exceeding 12.
The Challenge Cup is a national science and technology competition in China. It is hailed as the ‘Olympics’ in technological innovation among Chinese university students. The competition is hosted by well-known mainland universities and jointly organised by the Central Committee of the Young Communist League, the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, the All-China Students’ Federation, and provincial governments.
