On May 24, Nankai University (NKU) held the award ceremony for the “Volcengine Cup” AI Application Innovation Competition (the “Competition”) at the Fansun Building on Balitai Campus. Distinguished guests at the ceremony included: Chen Yulu, President of NKU; Sun Zhiliang, Full-time Deputy Secretary of Tianjin Municipal Education Working Committee; Li Tao, an eminent NKU alumnus and Vice Chairman of Beijing ByteDance Charity Foundation; Lan Shan, Technical Services General Manager of Beijing Volcano Engine Technology Co., Ltd. (“Volcengine”); and Song Shibin, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of China Higher Education Informatization Academy. NKU Vice President Fang Yongchun presided over the ceremony.

To cultivate next-generation innovators for the intelligent age, NKU launched the AI-Empowered Talent Development Action Plan in May 2024. Building on this initiative, NKU released the Nankai University AI Agent Development Platform in March, which has since gained remarkable traction across campus, with 15,000+ registered faculty and students, 14,000+ AI agents created, and 1.325 million interactions generated. The platform has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from its users. Complementing these efforts, NKU hosted the Competition to provide a dynamic platform for participants to showcase AI application innovations.

Chen Yulu emphasized in his address that NKU places high priority on talent cultivation and scientific innovation in the field of AI. According to him, the university is intensifying its efforts to build a trinity innovation ecosystem integrating teaching, technological infrastructure, and administrative services through the AI-Empowered Talent Development Action Plan. The Competition has concluded successfully with its tripartite mission fulfilled to enhance teaching, empower learning, and advance research. It has also provided robust support for deepening NKU’s distinctive AI-in-education matrix and propelling the development of the university’s signature “AI + Education” paradigm. Moving forward, NKU will continue to proactively embrace technological transformation, lead the digital evolution of education, and step up efforts to build China into a leading country in education, science and technology, and talent cultivation.

Sun Zhiliang stated that Tianjin Municipality attaches strategic importance to educational development and talent cultivation in the field of AI and vigorously promotes AI-education integration. He highlighted NKU’s pioneering role in launching the AI-Empowered Talent Development Action Plan, which has strengthened the thriving development of “AI + Education” ecosystem in Tianjin

Lan Shan stated that since Volcengine and NKU initiated their strategic partnership, the two parties have worked closely to explore new industry-education talent cultivation models and achieved a range of innovative outcomes.

The Competition centered on the theme “LLM-Based Campus AI Agent Application Innovations”. Participants competed on three tracks: software track (professional division), software track (non-professional division), and hardware track. Since the launch of the Competition, 139 teams with 496 contestants have spent three months developing exceptional AI applications across teaching, research assistance, mental health support, administrative services, and many other domains. Following rigorous evaluation, the Competition recognized outstanding teams with three First Prize awards, six Second Prize awards, eight Third Prize awards, and six Creativity Awards. The top honors were awarded to Brief BoT: A Personalized, Text-Image Integrated Research Tracking Assistant for Academic Frontiers (Software Track - Professional Division), Diagnostics Teaching System (Software Track - Non-Professional Division), and Smart Fire IoT: AI-Enhanced National Virtual Simulation Labs (Hardware Track). 

First Prize Winning Project: Brief BoT: A Personalized, Text-Image Integrated Research Tracking Assistant for Academic Frontiers (Software Track - Professional Division)

First Prize Winning Project: Diagnostics Teaching System (Software Track - Non-Professional Division)

First Prize Winning Project: Smart Fire IoT: AI-Enhanced National Virtual Simulation Labs (Hardware Track)

Following the award ceremony, a roundtable forum on AI Innovation and Talent Development was convened to explore “Student Practice in the Intelligent Age: from Tool Assistance to Ecosystem Transformation”. Expert and faculty representatives delivered keynote addresses about AI’s transformative role in higher education. 

（Edited and translated by Nankai News Team.)