30 projects awarded at innovation and entrepreneurship competition

The Yangtze Delta "Join" Sci-Tech Innovation & Entrepreneurship Competition has wrapped up in Shanghai, awarding prizes to 30 innovative projects in cutting-edge research fields.

This year, the competition saw 30 finalists selected from a competitive pool of 235 entries, with the participants collectively securing over 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in prize money.

Most of the finalists focus on next-generation information technology and biotechnology, aligning with global research trends and emphasizing the crucial integration of biotechnology and artificial intelligence.

The top prize was awarded to a project centered on base editing, a cutting-edge genome-editing technology.

"Our company is committed to developing innovative gene editing technologies to eliminate diseases," project leader Xu Tianhong said. We aim to establish our own core technological barriers to develop products."

Co-hosted by the School of Management at Fudan University and the Shanghai Yangtze River Delta Institute of Business Innovation, the competition aims to cultivate and incubate groundbreaking sci-tech projects in the Yangtze River Delta region, which includes Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Anhui, thereby fostering a robust sci-tech ecosystem.