On January 6, the 2022 China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Center Construction Seminar, hosted by Department of International Cooperation and Exchanges of the Ministry of Education and its Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Steering Committee, was successfully held in a hybrid online and offline format. Liu Pei, Deputy Director of the Academic Affairs Office of Tsinghua University and Head of the China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Center at Tsinghua University, delivered a keynote report. Tsinghua University received four awards, including the Award of Excellence in Supporting Competition and Innovation. Over 100 participants from 29 member institutions of the China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Centers, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, and Wenzhou University, attended the event.
2022 China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Center evaluation results
According to the evaluation results of the China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Centers, Tsinghua University received the Award of Excellence in Supporting Competition and Innovation. Three tutors from the Fundamental Industry Training Center of Tsinghua University—Pang Guan, Luo Yong, and Wang Dali—were awarded Tutor of Excellence. Tsinghua University's "Cosmic Music Box" team won the Team of Excellence, and the "Deep Collaboration and Innovation in China-U.S. University-Enterprise Integration of Industry and Education" was recognized as Project of Excellence.
Liu Pei delivered the speech.
Liu Pei delivered the keynote report titled "Industry-Education Integration for Creating a Vibrant Maker Ecosystem." Liu Pei introduced the talent cultivation model, goals, and achievements of the Tsinghua China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Center from the perspectives of the center's positioning, educational philosophy, initiatives, and outcomes, while incorporating the lens of industry-education integration. The Tsinghua China-U.S. Youth Maker Exchange Center is built upon the Fundamental Industry Training Center and the iCenter Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Platform. Under the guidance and coordination of the Academic Affairs Office, the platform extends across all departments of the university and collaborates with the Youth League Committee to establish an integrated innovation and entrepreneurship education ecosystem that aligns undergraduate and graduate programs. By co-developing impactful teaching platforms and projects with renowned domestic and international enterprises, the center integrates cutting-edge industrial technologies into courses, using innovation to promote collaborative education and exploring new talent development models through industry-education integration, thus creating a new ecosystem for industry-education integration.
Pang Guan, Associate Professor and Director of the Design and Prototype Lab at the Training Center, awarded Tutor of Excellence, guided students to win the second prize at the of the China-U.S. Youth Maker Competition in Beijing region and the Tsinghua Maker Challenge. Through various courses that connect departments from both Peking University and Tsinghua University, Pang fostered comprehensive design and innovation capabilities among students, establishing a course system that bridges humanities and engineering. Luo Yong, Deputy Director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Department at the Training Center, carried out the establishment of the "Course-Competition-Innovation Integration" platform for innovative practice education in the Maker Center and guided students to win multiple awards in competitions such as the "Internet+" Competition at Tsinghua University, the Tsinghua Challenge Cup, and the Chinese College Students' Engineering Practice and Innovation Ability Competition. Wang Dali, Project Manager at the Secretariat of the China University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education Alliance, guided the "Cosmic Music Box" project, which won the Grand Prize at the China-U.S. Youth Maker Competition. He also served as the team leader for Tsinghua University in the China International "Internet+" College Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, leading the team to win one championship, one runner-up, four gold medals, and two silver medals.
The "Cosmic Music Box" project, awarded Team of Excellence, was developed at Tsinghua University. It is an innovative musical instrument that allows humans to interact with the cosmos through sound. It consists of a space input and trigger component, as well as a ground-based sound generation and interaction component. The Cosmic Music Box converts abstract mathematical and physical information into perceivable sound forms and uses a spectrum to generate the timbres of planets from different directions. Combining the two, it creates unique planetary music, allowing participants to hear the sounds of the cosmos from earth and experience the harmony between heaven and earth.
Joint teaching of the Tsinghua iCenter-Dell Technologies dual-teacher team
The project titled "Deep Collaboration and Innovation in China-U.S. University-Enterprise Integration of Industry and Education," which was awarded Project of Excellence, has made significant exploration and research in integrating innovation and entrepreneurship with engineering practice education. Since 2020, Tsinghua University's iCenter Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Dell Technologies have gradually developed a dual-teacher team (comprising university faculty and industry mentors) and carried out a series of collaborations in "curriculum-research-experimental space-teacher seminars." These efforts have yielded fruitful results and valuable experiences in developing the university-enterprise cooperative education mode.
