The finals and award ceremony of the 7th Zhongguancun International Frontier Science and Technology Competition (hereinafter referred to as the "Frontier Competition") with the theme of "Opening up a New Frontier Track and Cultivating New Momentum for Development" were held in Beijing on April 26, and Shanghai New Silicon Polymerization Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "New Silicon Polymerization") won the championship. As the competition section of the Zhongguancun Forum, the Frontier Competition is not only a high-level international cutting-edge technology competition platform for foreign exchanges, but also an important means to select and incubate outstanding cutting-edge technology enterprises and teams. Compared with previous editions, this year's competition has achieved an increase in global participation, innovation leadership, reward support and collaborative services, attracting more than 3,100 projects from 75 countries and regions, of which artificial intelligence has shown the strongest innovation vitality, accounting for 21% of all participating projects.
More than 20% of the entries are from artificial intelligence
The Frontier Competition is now in its seventh year. Over the past seven years, the Frontier Competition has witnessed the hard work and forging ahead of a group of cutting-edge technology entrepreneurs. At the same time, it is accompanied by the incubation and growth of a number of world-first, world-leading high-quality achievements.
According to Gong Weimi, a member of the party group and deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission and the Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park Management Committee[1], this year's competition closely focuses on the cultivation of new quality productivity, and carefully sets up competitions in 10 fields, in which artificial intelligence shows the strongest innovation vitality, accounting for 21% of all participating projects. The entries cover more than 120 sub-tracks, such as large models, embodied intelligence, quantum information, photonic computing, brain-computer interfaces, synthetic biology, and trusted AI, and a large number of internationally leading high-level innovation achievements have emerged.
It is understood that with the theme of "opening up new frontier tracks and cultivating new momentum for development", this year's competition has collected more than 3,100 entries from 75 countries and regions since its launch in May 2023.
Gong Weimi said that since 2017, the frontier competition has focused on key areas such as biomedicine, artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, intelligent manufacturing and new materials, attracting 15,000 cutting-edge projects at home and abroad to sign up for the competition, more than 600 outstanding start-ups and teams have stood out, and the competition has provided more than 800 million yuan of subsidy financial support for 219 cutting-edge enterprises. As an important event section of the Zhongguancun Forum, the Frontier Competition has become a platform for high-level scientific and technological competition and foreign exchanges with international influence, and also provides valuable opportunities for exchanges and cooperation in the field of global science and technology.
It is worth mentioning that the global participation of this year's Frontier Competition has been further enhanced. For the first time, four overseas competition areas have been set up in North America, Europe, Asia, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, covering the world's major scientific and technological innovation highlands, attracting more than 1,280 projects from 74 countries and regions abroad, and the total number of overseas projects has reached 4 times that of the previous session, accounting for more than 40% of all participating projects this year, and the activity of North America and Europe is relatively high, with a total of more than 400 registrations, accounting for 2/3 of the total number of overseas projects.
New silicon polymerization won the crown
After fierce competition, the final results of this year's Frontier Competition were also announced at the award ceremony held on the afternoon of April 26. Among them, the new silicon polymerization from the field of integrated circuits won the championship, Boruikang Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and Shenzhen Photonic Crystal Technology Co., Ltd. won the second place, and Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. won the third place.
The company has developed a 4/6-inch monocrystalline piezoelectric thin film heterogeneous wafer batch manufacturing technology with independent intellectual property rights, which provides key heterogeneous substrate material products for domestic RF enterprises to produce 5G RF filters. It is expected that the RF filter area of smartphones will increase by 50% in the 5G era, and it is expected that the key wafer area consumed by a single 5G mobile phone will be greater than 25mm in the future, and the wafer demand is estimated to be 1 million pieces per year in 2024.
At the award ceremony, Ou Xin, founder, director and chief scientist of New Silicon Polymerization, said, "We hope to solve the bottleneck problem of some core devices through our innovative achievements, make our own contribution to the independent and controllable core chips as soon as possible, and will make more efforts to transform the results into new productivity."
Gong Weimi said that the scope of awards for this competition has been expanded from the top three in the finals of the last year to one champion, two runners-up, three third runners-up, and the top three in various subdivisions. In 2023, 10 award-winning enterprises will receive special financial support for the cultivation of cutting-edge technology enterprises in Zhongguancun through the green channel, accounting for nearly 39% of the total number of supported enterprises that year, and 53 enterprises will directly obtain the support of R&D funds for small and micro technology-based enterprises through the way of competition evaluation.
In addition, the frontier competition has built a systematic service system, covering investment and financing, space landing, talent attraction, market docking, policy presentation, listing training and other aspects, this year has coordinated 7 districts and 10 Zhongguancun characteristic industrial parks, organized 9 docking activities, and carried out one-to-one on-site docking with 35 participating enterprises, collecting finance, industry, talents, Space and other landing service needs, successfully promoted 8 excellent innovation teams to set up companies to achieve industrialization, and 12 companies and teams have plans to settle down and develop in Beijing.
We will continue to optimize and innovate the competition mechanism
The successful holding of the Frontier Competition is inseparable from the strong support of the Beijing Municipal Government, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments.
At the award ceremony, Yu Yingjie, member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the Education Working Committee, said that in the future, the competition will continue to optimize and innovate the competition mechanism, strive to create a high-level international cutting-edge technology exchange window, firmly grasp the direction of the global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, continue to broaden the track at home and abroad, and establish an effective cooperation mechanism with the world's top universities, laboratories, incubators, investment institutions, and professional institutions, so as to make the competition a bright business card leading the international cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation and the most dynamic platform for scientific and technological achievements exchange and cooperation.
Yu Yingjie also said that he will strengthen his service capabilities, strive to build the world's first choice for hard science and technology innovation and entrepreneurship, give full play to the advantages of Zhongguancun's science and education resources, gather various innovation resources such as talents, funds, space, and policies, improve the service level of talents, enterprises and other innovative subjects, and build a stage for all global participating enterprises and teams that want to start a business and dare to start a business, provide services, and continuously enhance the overall efficiency of the open innovation service system.
Zhang Biyong, a member of the party group of the Ministry of Science and Technology and president of Science and Technology Daily, said that in the next step, he will continue to adhere to the "four aspects" and better support Zhongguancun to play the role of a test field for reform and exploration. Support Zhongguancun to expand and strengthen its characteristic leading industries, focus on the new generation of information technology and medicine and health, and cultivate a number of world-class innovative industrial clusters with leading enterprises as the leader and key products of the industrial chain and key core technologies of the innovation chain as the support.
In the view of Chen Yancheng, deputy director of the High-tech Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Zhongguancun initiated the holding of a cutting-edge competition to promote the acceleration of the implementation and transformation of outstanding cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements such as biomedicine, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and intelligent manufacturing by selecting outstanding scientific and technological enterprises and teams from all over the world, which is of great significance for the mainland to accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system and high-quality development.
Chen Yancheng said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Beijing Municipal Government, will perform the responsibility of guiding the construction of science and technology parks such as national high-tech zones, strengthen top-level design, focus on work linkage, guide the pooling of resources, and support Zhongguancun to take the lead in the development of high-tech industrialization and accelerate the formation of new quality productivity, so as to build Zhongguancun into a world-leading science and technology park.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Ding Ning
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