Five SWJTU teams, after victories in the preliminaries at the university, provincial and division levels, won 1 first prize, 1 second prize and 3 third prizes on August 30, at the final of the 8th National University Students Optoelectronic Design Competition held at Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen with an unprecedented scale of 7861 participants from 1274 teams at 229 universities across the country, including Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University.

The University’s “Yiqun” team claimed the first prize with its project of “Smart” - GPU-accelerated Self-calibrating Iris Recognition System, and its supervisors, Profs. Zhu Hongna and Xu Lihua, were awarded the honorary title of “Excellent Tutor”, creating a new SWJTU record on the class and number of national-level awards in this event. The University also won the "Excellent Organization Award".

Organized by Chinese Optical Society, the Competition is intended to popularize photoelectric knowledge, enhance the development of college students’ practical and innovation capabilities, heighten their teamwork spirit, and promote the reform of higher education. As the top one for students at photoelectricity programmes in colleges and universities, the competition is a national event sponsored by Chinese Optical Society and the Steering Sub-Committee for higher education in Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering of the Ministry of Education. In 2020, the competition is included in the evaluation system of the national university discipline competition ranking list, which is one of the important indexes to evaluate the quality of innovative and entrepreneurial talent training.

Despite of the impact of the epidemic, the teachers and students involved went all out for this competition, and the Dean’s Office, Asset and Laboratory Management Office and other relevant departments rendered their full support to the preparation. The School of Physical Science and Technology and the School of Information Science and Technology organized a number of online and offline activities for the competition and offered a 20-day training session during the summer vacation by making full use of the advantageous platforms of National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center for Rail Transportation Information Engineering and Technology and National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center for Physics.

On August 16, SWJTU teams won 14 awards, including 4 first prizes, 4 second prizes and 6 third prizes, ranking in the forefront of Sichuan Province at the Southwest Division University Students Optoelectronic Design Competition. Profs. Zou Xihua, Zhu Hongna, Xu Lihua, Wang Heng and Miao Miao won the award of “Excellent Tutor”, and the University was also granted the “Excellent Organization Award” in Sichuan Province and Southwest Region.