Global Innovation Exchange announces innovation competition

The Global Innovation Exchange (GIX), a partnership between Tsinghua University and the University of Washington, announced that it is accepting applications for its second GIX Innovation Competition.

The competition, which was announced at a ceremony on the University of Washington campus in Seattle on Thursday, is for university students and worldwide innovators who have graduated within the past five years. It was created to spur solutions to global challenges.

The theme for this year's competition will be Connected Devices, which includes areas such as the internet of things (IoT), wearable devices, intelligent hardware, virtual and augmented reality, ubiquitous computing, intelligent sensors and natural interactions.

Teams made up of two to three members must submit an application by May 31, 2017. Then judges will select 50 teams to move on to the next round of the competition.

Next, six finalists will be chosen by July 12 and they will work with a mentor in July and August to prepare their projects for the final round. The six finalist teams will be flown to Seattle for a Sept 15 event, where they will present their final prototypes to the judges.

The winners will be announced at that time, with the first-, second-, and third-place winners dividing up an expected $100,000 in prize money between them. TusStar of Beijing is sponsoring the competition again this year.

In the first year of the GIX Innovation Competition, there were nearly 300 entries from China, the United States, Britain, France, Australia and other countries. The winning projects included solutions in air pollution, navigation for the blind, and renewable energy.

This year's announcement coincides with the visit to Seattle of Yang Bin, vice-president and provost of Tsinghua University, and Professor Shi Yuanchuan, dean of GIX.

"Last year's competition was a great success and showed just how innovative (that) teams of motivated students can be," said Yang. "With this year's competition, we're hoping to raise the bar even higher."

lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com