On October 30, Guangzhou University held an entrepreneurship competition for students from Guangzhou and its sister cities to share their business proposals for sustainable urban development.
This event marked the finals of the 2024 Urban Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. A total of 25 teams from nine universities, including many traveling from Australia, Malaysia, and other countries, presented their business projects in a ten-minute presentation and Q&A session.
A competitor on the stage (Photo: Guangzhou University)
Group photo of the competition participants (Photo: Guangzhou University)
Taking up the theme "Promoting Sustainable Urban Development," the competition saw many student projects trying to reduce carbon emissions, energy consumption, and environmental pollution through technological innovations.
Among the projects was that of Tan Dong Jue and his team from Malaysia's Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology. In urban public spaces like schools and shopping malls, Tan and his team noticed that people often circle around looking for available parking spots. To reduce unnecessary carbon emissions from this practice, they developed a smart system that displays the nearest available parking spots to drivers.
Instead of discovering a project idea in daily life, Alexandre Jorge and his team from the University of Coimbra in Portugal were initially driven by the efforts to solve the contemporary problem of water pollution in India's textile industry. Focusing on the reuse of dye that is currently disposable, Jorge and his team are trying to develop technologies that can achieve a 99% recovery rate of dye wastewater, which may include toxic and potentially carcinogenic compounds.
After a few companies showed interest in their technologies, Jorge hopes that their technologies can serve as a global solution to water pollution in textile industries worldwide in the future.
"Climate change poses unpredictable challenges to city life, especially in large ones like Guangzhou. We hope this competition allows students to showcase their research projects and fosters a global dialogue on sustainable urban development," said Professor Fu Jiyang, Vice President of Guangzhou University, during a media interview about the competition.
The 2024 Urban Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition was organized by the Alliance of Guangzhou Sister-City Universities, founded under the initiative of Guangzhou University in 2018. The alliance currently comprises 23 member institutions across 18 countries in five continents.
In 2020, the alliance initiated the Urban Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition for member university students to propose innovative technological solutions that can help achieve the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Reporter | Chen Siyuan
Photo | Guangzhou University
Editor | Nan, Nina, James
