Students Publish Green Paper with National GEDC Winners

Release time：2024-04-22    

April 22, 2024

Students from the Elite Masters of Finance (EMF) Program released a bespoke English report today on The World Earth Day to define how young finance talents should look at electrical and electronic engineering innovations with an impact investing mindset, analyzing cases provided by eleven (11) winning projects from the 18th China Graduate Electronic Design Competition (GEDC) 2023, all part of their annual “The Great SDGs Challenge in Impact Investing” coursework.

The report which is titled “Analysis of Sustainability Deliverables of The Finalists From The Graduate Electronic Design Competition 2023” is the final output from the Responsibility and Ethics module of the C.A.R.E.  (Culture, Art, Responsibility and Ethics) class taken at Fudan University's Main Campus on October 28, 2023, lasting exactly 8.5 hours.

This 4th iteration of The Great SDGs Challenge in Impact Investing was completed in partnership with the Education Committee of the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE) and the Organizing Committee of The Graduate Electronic Design Competition (GEDC).  The iconic event is the largest innovation and entrepreneurship competition for graduate students in China. More than 25,000 graduate students from 333 universities in electrical and electronic engineering participated in the first rounds of the competition, making up of 6,289 teams from eight regions around China. 1,800 student and faculty advisors  making up 524 teams participated in the finals held at Dongguan Institute of Technology in August 2023 from the 13th to the 15th.

EMF Students were tasked to work with Eleven (11) Finalists from the Graduate Electronic Design Competition (GEDC) Finals held on August 15th, 2023 in Dongguan, China, and conducted Due Diligence/Sustainability Analysis, Live Interview(s) on day of their class and prepared the final Green Paper report for publishing.

“There is little question that technology development in computing, including the semiconductor and micro-electronics industries, will be the driving force for both social and economic growth in the future. It’s extremely important for our EMF students to engage with their peers from this sector to better understand it and its potential impact as early as possible,” explained Professor Charles Chang, Deputy Dean of Academics at FISF, “we hope to foster a community committed to idea collision that brings together future leaders in the finance profession and groundbreaking technologists to begin that collaboration, working together towards global sustainability.”

“This year’s Green Paper is exceptional in bringing together future leaders from two very different sectors as early as we are able to, and help these young talents to deep dive into prevailing technology projects that should include sustainability goals and deliver on greater global social impact,” said Allan Chou, Global Advisor and Chief Designer of The Great SDGs Challenge, “where we would like to push this SDG educational project and others is to focus more towards action driven deliverables in the next few rounds because we’re just running out of time to reach the Global Goals by 2030, taking immediate SDG Action is the primary objective for everyone on this planet.”

Comments From Mentors and Judges

“The Great SDGs Challenge is definitely a globally-engaged activity, where students from different countries closely cooperated and communicated, altogether presenting a productive roadshow. It proves to the world, once again, that China is committed to promoting sustainable, green and low-carbon development system. The activity also serves as a platform to integrate finance and technology. As future industry such as AI, big model, humanoid intelligence, big data analysis etc. spring up quickly, it's inevitable for those in the financial field to learn how to find, understand and empower cutting-edge technologies. We are glad to see that many projects in the Challenge have applied those innovations and more importantly, found proper scenarios. This would be a valuable experience, laying a solid foundation for the future contact with sci-tech innovations.”

Nicolai Huang

Strategic Development Manager 

Shanghai Caohejing Hi-Tech Park

Comments From Students

“As a classic project of the CARE course, The Great SDGs Challenge helps students to expand their perspectives beyond finance. In this activity, we learned the products and industries of Electronics Design Competition Projects in depth, and took the initiative to interview members of the project team, which also exercised our communication skills. In the end, we also completed the report on the investment value of the whole project in ESG. I think this activity is a good extension from our main curriculum.”

“The Great SDGs Challenge gives us a spectacular opportunity to jump out of our previous experiences which only focusing on the financial profit, instead paying attention to the sustainable development issues. During the whole challenge, we cooperate with the winning team from NJUPT. When doing the due diligence, we learned a lot of material knowledge and also raised several questions related to the SDG perspective during the interview. As a finance major student, I benefited a lot from this challenge. Not only did I know the latest technology of flexible pressure sensors, but also give me a chance to think how this technology and its related products can make this world better.” 

“The SDGs challenge has been a valuable experience for me. It has provided me with a unique opportunity to closely engage with start-up projects and interview CEOs and CTOs during the due diligence process. Through this journey, I have gained a profound understanding of the significance of corporate and project social responsibility. Participating in the SDGs has not only offered invaluable learning and personal growth but also heightened my awareness of social responsibility, empowering me to think and act in a more comprehensive and sustainable manner. I am truly inspired to promote the achievement of sustainable development goals within our respective fields. By integrating social interests into our ventures, we can pave the way for sustainable development and long-term success.”

“SDGs help us complete team collaboration tasks from the perspective of entrepreneurs, while focusing more on the social value of the project, which has greatly benefited us. I believe the most valuable gain from this competition is being the leader of investment, assisting technically strong project teams in the process of commercializing from 0 to 1. In addition, I also realized that only through teamwork can we achieve better results in a short period of time.”

Many thanks to all the mentors for your guidance, and inspiring professional knowledge and suggestions.

You can receive a copy of the “Analysis of Sustainability Deliverables of The Finalists from The Graduate Electronic Design Competition 2023” report by contact: Betty Chen via email at emf_student@fudan.edu.cn .