City University of Macau (CityU) grandly launched the Honors Class this academic year with the Faculty of Data Science as the trial point, providing elite cultivation to 30 students selected from the Bachelor of Intelligence Technology and Services program and the Bachelor of Computer Science. According to the curriculum, the “X-Idea” and “Pre-Student Research Training” (pre-SRT) phases have been successfully completed. Under the guidance of a distinguished global mentoring team and faculty, the students have excelled in various fields, including paper presentations, tech competitions, industry-academic research projects, R&D application and large language model (LLM) applications, showcasing exceptional innovative capabilities.
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Drawing upon 15 years of experience from the Tsien Excellence in Engineering Program (TEEP, also known as the Tsien Hsue-shen Elite Class in Mechanics) founded by Tsinghua University, CityU’s Honors Class has partnered with X-Institute, Shenzhen, to create an innovative talent development model in collaboration with renowned experts such as Academicians Zheng Weimin, Quanshui Zheng and Fang Binxing. To this end, a new advanced learning system has been designed, which includes five training phases: X-Idea, Preliminary Student Research Training (pre-SRT), Advanced Student Research Training (adv-SRT), Open Research for Innovation Challenges (ORIC), and Senior Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).
Starting from basic research training all the way to independent research and advanced overseas internships, the curriculum stimulates students’ intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm for sci-tech and fosters their comprehensive innovative abilities. Throughout this process, students will absorb new knowledge, embrace new challenges and enhance their overall innovative competencies.
The Honors Class focuses on key research areas, including “Large Language Model and Generative AI”, “Smart Healthcare and Medical AI”, “AI Applications in Education”, “Computer Vision and Deep Learning Technologies”, and “Specialized Frontiers and Interdisciplinary Applications”. Notably, six students have achieved significant results in their research projects related to these topics, presenting papers at academic conferences such as the 29th Global Chinese Conference on Computer in Education (GCCCE 2025) and the 18th International Conference on Knowledge Science, Engineering and Management (KSEM 2025). These outstanding achievements reflect the educational philosophy of “driving innovation through academia”, providing empirical support for the development of top-tier talent.
Additionally, students in the Honors Class have excelled in various competitions, winning first and second prizes in the finals of the 15th “Chengda Cup” National College Students Market Research and Analysis Competition, a third prize in the South China region of the 15th MathorCup College Mathematical Modeling Challenge, and a third prize in the Macao regional at the “Huawei ICT Competition 2024-2025”.
Leveraging rich academic resources, CityU organized master lectures for students, inviting Academician Quanshui Zheng to deliver a keynote speech on “The Joy of Learning and Teaching”. Notable scholars from Tsinghua University and Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen) presented lectures on topics such as “Thoughts about Mathematics Education”, “Micro-Nano Robots and Materials Science” and “The Interaction of Vision and Touch—Perception and Grasping Technologies for Complex Targets”. The University also hosted academic seminars on “Reflections on Mathematics Education” and “Revealing Causal Information from Data”, along with multiple student forums and end-of-term presentations.
In addition, students were organized to visit tech innovation companies and research institutions in Shenzhen while actively engaging in industry-academia-research projects in local high schools.
Through diverse academic activities, on-site visits, interactive exchanges, and reflective summaries, students in the Honors Class greatly expanded their academic horizons, sparked creativity, solidified theoretical knowledge through practice and enhanced their research capabilities. This summer, several students from the Honors Class will participate in the “X-Challenge” summer innovation camp and the “X-Fusion” global innovators summit, tackling practical challenges and discussing cutting-edge issues with top scientific teams and leading tech companies worldwide, providing inspiration for their future research and further studies.
