August 14–18, the final round of the 20th CIMC “Siemens Cup” China Intelligent Manufacturing Challenge was held at Beijing University of Chemical Technology. The team from Northeast Forestry University’s (NEFU) School of Control and Information Engineering distinguished itself with a solid engineering foundation and outstanding practical skills, winning the Grand Prize in the Industrial Embedded System Development category. Ranked among the national top 10, the team’s achievement marks a historic breakthrough for the university.

The “Siemens Cup” China Intelligent Manufacturing Challenge aligns with the latest trends in industrial technology and is dedicated to cultivating a new generation of engineers. It has become the largest and longest-running competition in intelligent manufacturing. Listed in the National Ranking of Discipline Competitions for General Higher Education Institutions, it is also a Category A national competition under the strategic cooperation framework between the Ministry of Education and Siemens.

This year’s competition featured 14 categories and drew participants from 1,070 universities, with 13,524 teams and more than 43,000 teachers and students registering. Under the competition rules, among teams that won Grand Prizes or First Prizes in the national preliminary rounds, the highest-ranked team from each university in each category was shortlisted for the final round. A total of 90 Grand Prizes were awarded across all categories in the final round. The School of Control and Information Engineering at NEFU entered six teams. In addition to the team that won the Grand Prize, two other teams earned First Prizes in the national preliminary rounds.

In preparation for the competition, the faculty coaching team adopted a training model featuring “faculty guidance, technical knowledge transfer, and student practice.” By fully leveraging AI’s powerful support capabilities, the team fostered an intensive, vibrant, competition-oriented learning environment. The achievement also reflects the School’s efforts to implement the educational philosophy of “Integrating Coursework with Competitions, Practice First” and to deepen reforms in training new engineering talent.