On July 4th, the 2026 Graduate Summer Science and Innovation Camp of the School kicked off. Outstanding graduate students from universities nationwide explored cutting-edge topics on the integration of AI and business through immersive learning and hands-on practice.

     At the opening ceremony, Professor MA Lei, Deputy Dean of the Graduate School of ECUST, delivered an address. He stated that themed “AI-Driven Industrial Innovation and Business Transformation”, the camp serves as a systematic practice for the university to further implement the "Two New & Two Great" strategy and explore the new paradigm of the "AI-Dual-Star" Initiative and smart engineering education. By integrating industry and education and engaging in real-world scientific research, the camp aims to facilitate graduate students' transformation from “learners” to “creators”.

     Professor YAO Lei, Vice Chair of the School Council, noted in his speech that the Graduate Summer Science and Innovation Camp puts into practice the School's iBEST mission. Characterized by“expanding boundaries via interdisciplinarity, sharpening competence through hands-on practice, and pursuing progress through integration”, the camp applies AI to solve real-world industrial problems and builds a practical incubation platform for cultivating interdisciplinary economics and management talents for the AI era.

    In the keynote session, ZHANG Zhiguo, President of Dadao Data, gave a presentation entitled “Knowledge-Driven AI Upgrade: Building Industry-Oriented Intelligent Brains”. He systematically illustrated application pathways of data-enabled knowledge transformation across industries, and demonstrated how AI empowers enterprises to become masters of intelligent decision-making with practical cases from high-complexity sectors such as finance. QIN Ming, Director of Public Affairs at Shanghai Coopers Technology Co., Ltd., delivered the report “From Internet Plus to AI Plus ”. She elaborated on six major transformations of data, and reviewed technological evolution and industrial opportunities for constructing high-quality datasets. The two keynote speeches enabled camp participants to examine trends in AI-business integration from the industrial frontier and laid a solid cognitive foundation for in-depth learning throughout the camp.

    During the Competition-Oriented Workshop, SI Zhongye from the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship shared rich experience as a judge for competitions including the “Challenge Cup” and “China Innovation Wing”. He presented typical cases of AI-empowered innovation contests and analyzed evolving competition trends. Subsequently, three award-winners took the floor in sequence: GE Zhenghua, winner of the Shanghai Special Prize of the 15th “Challenge Cup”; WANG Jiahui, National Second Prize winner of the National Graduate Finance and Technology Innovation Competition; and ZHANG Jiawen, National Third Prize winner of the Zhengda Cup National Market Survey Competition. They shared practical insights covering project incubation, team collaboration and defence skills. Their sharing smoothed the pathway for innovation practice and greatly inspired participants to pursue learning through competitions.

    The themed forum on “Agents and Embodied Intelligence” focused on hot-button issues in artificial intelligence and business. Bringing together elite industry leaders and distinguished scholars from the School of Business, the forum built a high-level dialogue platform combining academic research and industrial practice. In the round-table discussion, participants conducted in-depth deliberations on technology implementation pathways, corporate organizational transformation, industrial ethical norms and other topics. They exchanged ideas, pooled collective wisdom and envisioned future development directions for artificial intelligence.

     Prior to hands-on project sessions, GUAN Huiyu, Product Lead at Shanghai Institute of Science and Intelligence, gave a lecture covering AI technology trends, AI tool application, organizational transformation brought by AI-Native, and enterprise-level AI implementation. His lecture helped participants establish a complete cognitive framework spanning technical principles to hands-on tool operation.

    After intensive academic input and idea exchanges, the camp moved to hands-on project development. Participants formed cross-university and interdisciplinary teams. Under the guidance of project supervisors, they carried out requirement analysis, solution design, data collection, system construction and project defence for real-world corporate research topics. They creatively applied AI tools and methodologies acquired from workshops and lectures to tackle practical problems.

    On July 8th, led by Professor WU Bing, Vice Dean of the School, camp participants visited AGIBOT (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. for on-site study. They gained first-hand insights into the rapid development and real-world product applications of the embodied-intelligence industry, and experienced the transformative power brought by AI-driven industrial change through close contact with industry players.

    The five-day camp yielded fruitful outcomes. Participants completed seven high-quality project proposals within a short period, and a number of outstanding achievements were recognized and awarded. The successful holding of the camp marks an important practice of the School in interdisciplinary talent cultivation. It also serves as a vivid example of the School's response to the national “AI Plus” strategy and its commitment to fostering new-quality productive forces. Going forward, guided by the iBEST mission, the School will continue to integrate high-quality resources and develop more high-level science-and-innovation platforms. Through sustained interdisciplinary collaboration and industry-education integration, the School strives to cultivate outstanding interdisciplinary economics and management talents equipped with technological insight, business decision-making capability and cross-boundary integration competence, contributing to national self-reliance in science and technology as well as industrial transformation and upgrading.