The 5th SCO Member States Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition Concludes Successfully, Multi-Country Youth Jointly Explore New Horizons for Sci-Tech Cooperation

Recently, the opening ceremony of the inaugural ChinaSCO Sci-Tech Innovation Cooperation Conference was held in Qingdao, alongside the award ceremony for the final round of the 5th SCO Member States Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, where the final list of winners was officially announced. Officials from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the SCO Secretariat, educational and scientific authorities from SCO member states, as well as academicians and experts from multiple countries, witnessed the event together. Outstanding participating projects delivered onsite roadshows, and a signing ceremony with cooperation partners was held, marking the transition from competition to industrial collaboration.

Group Photo of Final AwardWinning Projects

Fierce Competition Across All Tracks, Hong Kong (China) New Materials Project Takes Top PrizeSince its official launch in June, this year's competition set up ten regional qualifiers across eight SCO member states, collecting over 200 projects covering subsectors including digital economy, artificial intelligence, biomedicine, new materials, new energy, and modern agriculture, with 20 projects ultimately advancing to the final round.

In the final round, after a rigorous evaluation by a judging committee led by academicians and experts from multiple countries, the project from Hong Kong (China), "WorldLeading Stretchable Fabric PCB: NextGeneration Electronic Skin," won the first prize. The project has achieved breakthroughs in flexible electronic materials with over 200% stretchability, high breathability, and machinewashable performance, enabling versatile applications in smart wearables, embodied intelligence, and other fields, with comprehensive sensing and analytical feedback capabilities for human physiological signals and robotic tactile interaction data. The Chinese project "Innovation and Application of Efficient Breeding Technology System for Elite Dairy Cows" and the Kyrgyzstan project "ArtSkin – Neural Interface for Restoring Tactile Sensation" won second prizes. The Russian project "MaterialGen – AI Platform for Accelerated R&D in Materials Science," the Chinese project "Graphene Chipbased SingleMolecule Immunoanalyzer," and the Kazakhstan project "Rekreate AI: FullContent Marketing System" won third prizes. Fourteen projects, including the Belarus international cooperation project "Synthesis, Structure and Properties of Composite Multifunctional BioCoatings," received Excellence Awards.

Multiple Projects Featured at the Conference, Signing and Roadshows Advance Transformation and Matchmaking

Leveraging the conference as a platform, highquality competition projects were simultaneously connected with industrial resources to facilitate the realization of cooperation intentions. During the conference's key technology innovation project signing session, the Belarus project "Intelligent Humanoid Robot (Embodied AI – Industry 5.0)" signed a longterm strategic cooperation agreement with a Chinese enterprise. The two sides will deepen collaboration in technological cooperation, component supply, joint applications for overseas technology cooperation projects, and shared market expansion, serving as a representative outcome of the competition's crossborder transformation efforts.

In the conference's roadshow session, three awardwinning projects – "Innovation and Application of Efficient Breeding Technology System for Elite Dairy Cows," "ArtSkin – Neural Interface for Restoring Tactile Sensation," and "PetroPhage – Smart ThreeLayer Biodegradable Film for Oil Pollution Remediation" – took the stage in succession, presenting their core technologies, application scenarios, and international cooperation needs, with preliminary connections to research institutions, industrial parks, and investment institutions from various countries present, continuously amplifying the competition's spillover effects.

Three Finalist Projects Participating in the Conference Roadshow

FullChain Ecosystem Empowers Continued Deepening of Youth SciTech Cooperation

Since its launch, this year's competition has established a fullchain service system encompassing "capability building + resource matchmaking + outcome transformation." In addition to conducting project roadshow selections across multiple countries, online project matchmaking sessions were concurrently held to facilitate early connections between outstanding projects and Chinese industrial resources, leading to multiple cooperation intentions. A fiveday SCO Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Camp provided finalist participants with systematic training courses on business model optimization, crossborder intellectual property strategy, and more, while also organizing visits to leading local enterprises and key industrial parks for onsite research, enabling indepth connections with industrial scenarios and market resources, and comprehensively enhancing the entrepreneurial capabilities and practical adaptability of the projects.

Training Camp Participants Visiting Leading Local Enterprises and Key Industrial Parks in Qingdao

This year's competition served as a bridge connecting the innovative forces of youth from SCO member states, establishing an efficient conduit for multilateral technology exchange, project collaboration, and industrial matching. Going forward, the organizers will continue to track the progress of awardwinning projects, refine followup support services, and promote deeper and more substantive crossborder scitech cooperation, injecting sustained youthdriven momentum into SCO scientific and technological innovation collaboration.