On 2 November, Mohamed Ahmed Arafat Ahmed, an Egyptian PhD student with the School of New Energy, China University of Geosciences （CUG）, won the Grand Prize at the 15th “Challenge Cup” National College Students’ Entrepreneurship Competition, sponsored by China Construction Bank, for his project “Echoes on the Way: An L2-Class Intelligent Drill-Bit Control System — A Chinese Solution for International Energy Cooperation”.

Mohamed Ahmed Arafat Ahmed (right)

The winning project — coordinated by the School of Earth Resources and completed by 15 Chinese and international students — targets the need for efficient oil and gas extraction along the Belt and Road, and tackles bottlenecks in formation identification, slow model iteration and lagging bit adjustment with an intelligent drill-bit control system integrating sensing-while-drilling, dynamic modeling and adaptive steering.

The system is already in service in the UAE and Egypt, and has since earned its developer a National High-Tech Enterprise certification.

Arafat (fourth from left, second row) with team members

The project means more than a piece of hardware. CUG's approach to international education is reflected in collaborations of this kind: building on its strengths in geosciences, serving the Belt and Road Initiative, and using talent development to advance exchange and cooperation across the international geoscience community where international students become a bridge for scientific and technological cooperation and mutual cultural learning between China and other countries.