Source: School of Software
Written by: Huang Lingjuan
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On December 7, the 2013 Citi Financial Innovation Application Competition was held in Swasey Hall of Sun Yat-sen University. After fierce competition, Angryfish_Brinyfish, the SYSU team made up of students from School of Software and Lingnan College, ranked No. 2, winning the second prize and US$4,500. Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen University won the “Best Organizer Award”.

Zhu Kongjun, Deputy Secretary and Vice President of SYSU; Jiang Ning, Deputy Director of the Division of Software and Information Service Sector of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatizaton; Yu Jin, Executive Vice President and Country Human Resources Officer of Citi China; and Gary Li, General Manager of Citigroup Software Technology and Services (China) Limited (CSTS), attended and addressed the award ceremony. Li Wenjun, Assistant President of SYSU and Dean of School of Software; Qi Xiaoping, Director of Student Affairs Office of SYSU; Huang Yi, Secretary of SYSU Youth Association; Zou Dan, Deputy Director of Career Development Counseling Center of SYSU; leaders of School of Software, School of Business and Lingnan College; expert judges of the competition; and representatives from more than twenty universities attended the award ceremony.

Deputy Secretary and Vice President Zhu Kongjun said that SYSU and Citi have collaborated for many years to explore talent cultivation mode. Citi has set up a scholarship at SYSU and the two sides reached an intention to jointly train Finance IT interdisciplinary talents. The nine Finance IT lectures this year have benefited over 500 students and expanded their horizons. The "Citi Cup" competition has made important contributions to the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents in the field of financial informatization.

Up till now, the “Citi Cup” competition has been held nine times. This year it is officially renamed “Citi Financial Innovation Application Competition” with the aim to drive financial technology innovation. Since its launch in March at SYSU, the competition has attracted 159 teams of over 1,000 students from 46 universities nationwide. After 9-month preparation and preliminaries, the 1-day final competition produced several awards including “Best Future Payment Innovation Award” and “Best Technology Realization Product Award”.