The year 2020 is the 10th year that Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) has been approved for its establishment, and it is also a crucial year for SUSTech to seize the major historical opportunities brought by the development of the Greater Bay Area and Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (double zone) and accelerate the construction of a world-class university.

In 2020, SUSTech has been attaching great importance to talent training, striving to cultivate top-notch innovative talents, which has seen fruitful results.

Increasing employment of graduates

SUSTech’s exploration of a new education model and talent cultivation obtained satisfactory results. In 2020, around 65% of undergraduates continued to attract attention from top universities at home and abroad. The rest of them opted for full-time employment, with an employment rate of 98%.

Enrollment of higher-quality students

In 2020, SUSTech embraced 1,097 undergraduates and 1,463 graduates. There were 43,000 candidates from 22 provinces across mainland China applied for the University, with the number of candidates reaching a new high.

Still, SUSTech offered students admission through its “631” comprehensive evaluation model, with an aim to establish an evaluation mechanism for outstanding talents. The University has also launched some talent programs to attract more students who have won scientific Olympiad medals across different disciplines, such as the innovative elite mathematics master class and Turing computer science master class.

The University became a doctorate-awarding institution in 2019 and began to recruit and cultivate its own postgraduates at home and abroad in 2019. In 2020, a total of 920 postgraduates and 555 doctoral students were admitted by SUSTech, many of whom were from first-class universities and research institutes at home and abroad, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Nanyang Technological University, and Imperial College London. The newly recruited undergraduate and postgraduate students also included 34 international students who are from Portugal, Vietnam, and Malaysia.

The University actively promotes wide-ranging cooperation with universities, enterprises, and scientific research institutions. In 2020, SUSTech has carried out postgraduate joint training projects with 40 famous enterprises and three provincial laboratories, including Tencent, Ping’an, BYD, and BGI.

In 2020, SUSTech had 909 undergraduate students, 377 graduate students who are in the joint training program with Harbin Institute of Technology, and 15 Ph.D. students. About 98.02% of the Class of 2020 continued their academic pursuits or have found jobs.

65.9% of undergraduates continued to study in top universities at home and abroad, among whom 24% of undergraduates managed to be admitted into the Ph.D. program. 32.12% of undergraduates managed to find a job and 90% of them are working in the Greater Bay Area.

SUSTech students get good results in multiple competitions at home and abroad

In January 2020, SUSTech’s undergraduate students Daoyi CHEN and Fujia ZHENG won the third prize in the 2020 FLTRP English Debate Winter Camp & the Second Guangdong International Debate Competition (Shenzhen).

In February 2020, undergraduate students Minjia CHEN, Hongxing LU, Bingjie LV, Zhenzhen CHEN (foreign student), and Xiaoru PENG won the champion in CFA Institute Research Challenge (South China).

In March 2020, the student assistant team of the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Social Science Center received support from the Guangdong Provincial Committee for the project of Ceramics Specimen Database.

28 students won the gold medal in the 12th “Challenge Cup” Guangdong University Student Entrepreneurship Competition. SUSTech undergraduate students Zhiyao TANG, Yu MO, and graduate students Kai QIAN, Yujue ZHOU, Zezheng FENG, and Yuhuan LIU won the first prize and the third prize respectively in the second “Huawei Cloud Cup” 2020 Shenzhen Open Data Application Innovation Competition.

In August 2020, in the final of the National University Student Optoelectronic Design Competition, one team of SUSTech won the second prize and two teams won the third prize.

In October 2020, nine students participated in the autonomous vision group of the 13th International Underwater Robot Competition. All the six teams won the prizes. SUSTech’s ARES robot club won the champion of “semi-automatic time trial group” and “semi-automatic confrontation group” in the RoboCom World Robot Developer Competition (South China). In the Sixth China University Students Program Design Competition (Qinhuangdao), SUSTech won multiple awards, setting a new record for the University in this competition. 12 SUSTech students won the second prize in National University Robot Competition ROBOCON.

In November 2020, the team formed by 11 SUSTech undergraduate students won second place in the APAC HPC-AI competition. It was the only team in mainland China that won the prize.

In addition, the year 2020 saw multiple research outputs of SUSTech in international academic journals and conferences.

Earlier in March 2020, SUSTech Ph.D. Xiao XU made important progress in thermoelectric materials research and published his paper as the first author in Chemistry of Materials, a world-class journal in materials chemistry.

In April 2020, SUSTech undergraduate student Tianqi ZHENG published the latest research results on 3D printing of high-performance alumina ceramic composites in Ceramics International, a well-known journal in ceramics. SUSTech Ph.D. Jiahao Yu published a review article on InfoMat, a journal in the field of information materials as the first author.

In May 2020, undergraduate student Qikun HU was elected as “Guangdong Outstanding Youth”. In July, Qiao LAN, an undergraduate from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of SUSTech, and Bojie LV published their paper on IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications as the first author and second author respectively. In December, Guan HUANG and other SUSTech students won the Best Student Thesis Award of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Robotics and Mechatronics.

SUSTech cultivates all-round talents

In 2020, SUSTech gave new insights into education and cultivated talents with the “Three Circles” education system. The system includes the core circle, the support circle, and the cooperation circle. The core circle involves the teaching content, teachers, and teaching method of ideological and political theory courses. The support circle highlights the educational function of the curriculum. The cooperation circle includes a series of patriotism education activities, which aims to cultivate talents to be equipped with patriotic passion, global vision, and innovative ability in the new era.

2020 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. SUSTech set up the special ideological and political course of “reform, innovation and first demonstration”. Many senior officials, entrepreneurs, and experts in Shenzhen were invited to give lectures. The activity has deepened students’ understanding of socialism with Chinese characteristics, encouraging them to realize their dreams and make their own contributions to the country.

In February 2020, the first lesson of the special ideological and political course was given online with the theme of COVID-19. SUSTech University Council Chairperson, President, Vice President, and Head of the Second Affiliated Hospital gave speeches online respectively so that the staff and students could have a deeper understanding of what was going on. Since then, Sikang WU, Director of the Development Research Center of Shenzhen Municipal Government, Zhongpu LIU, full-time member of the Decision-Making Advisory Committee of Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee, and famous entrepreneurs gave more lectures on the trend and future of Shenzhen, the path and experience of scientific and technological innovation in Shenzhen.

A nation needs talents and self-cultivation makes a nation stronger. In 2020, the University carried out a series of patriotism education activities with the theme of “making a contribution to the country and cultivating oneself” in order to cultivate patriotism and perseverance of the students and encourage them to engage in the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

2020 is the 10th anniversary of the founding of SUSTech. In order to celebrate its anniversary, the University encouraged people to share their stories with SUSTech. Staff, students, alumni, students’ parents, as well as people from all walks of life who have participated in the construction of SUSTech and are concerned about the development of the University were all welcomed to participate in the activity. During the celebration, SUSTech encouraged its staff and students to engage in voluntary service, thus further cultivating their love for their University and country. In addition, SUSTech organized students to read original poems to show their respect to medical workers who were fighting the epidemic on the front line.

On the morning of October 1, 2020, SUSTech solemnly held the flag-raising ceremony and the launching ceremony of college student recruitment at Green Pine Stadium in order to celebrate the 71st anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The activities have helped enhance student’s confidence in the country, encouraging them to engage in the great cause of national rejuvenation and the prosperity of their motherland.

In the new year of 2021, SUSTech will continue to cultivate talents with morality and further construct the talent-training system. In the critical year, the University will keep an eye on cultivating top-notch talents for the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and the Greater Bay Area, and making more contributions to the innovation and development of the country.