The China-US Young Maker Competition’s Suzhou tryout was held at the Dushu Lake Sports Center in the Suzhou Industrial Park on June 16 and 17, attracting over 200 participants from 30 universities and enterprises for the event about innovation and startup.
Focusing on sectors including education, environmental protection, health, transportation, and energy, young makers showed their ideas that combined technology and enthusiasm, engaged in exchanges, and created interesting interactive projects. The five winning teams will represent Suzhou to participate in the competition’s final in Beijing in July.
Li Hongji, a senior student of the computer science major at Suzhou-based Xi’an Jiaotong- Liverpool University, and his teammate Fu Yu won the second prize. According to Li, their project “Presentation Simulator VR” aims to solve the problem of social phobia by simulating different scenarios for users to make speeches, interact with the "audience", and receive training in other programs. It took the team only three months to turn the idea into a design and finally into a concrete project.
The China-US Young Maker Competition, sponsored by the Ministry of Education, was a signature initiative during the Seventh China-US Consultation on People-to-People Exchanges in 2016. The competition focuses on community development, education, environmental protection, health, transportation, energy and other areas important to sustainable development. It guides and supports the youth of China and the United States to jointly create new products and applications with social and industrial values. The competition has been held for four consecutive years, attracting more than 20,000 young makers from the two countries
