[Paris, France, May 29, 2024] Huawei launched its Tech Arena Europe 2024 competition on Friday at Viva Technology, one of Europe's biggest tech summits.
Tech Arena (formerly known as the Huawei European University Challenge Program) is committed to providing students from all over the world with an incredible opportunity to test themselves in the latest real-world technology challenges offered by the industry. Participants will immerse themselves in a variety of fields, including algorithms used in AI, autonomous driving, optical networks, and wireless networks. (Watch the promotional video for the competition here)
Liu Shaowei, director of Huawei's European Research Institute, said at the press conference that the company plans to hold more than 10 Tech Arena competitions in 2024. Confirmed locations include Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Each competition is open to university students from many countries and regions. The competitions will cover cutting-edge topics relevant to many industries.
Liu Shaowei at the launch of the 2024 Tech Arena
Liu Shaowei pointed out that talent is essential for the development of the digital world. As a global ICT provider, Huawei focuses on basic research and innovation, aiming to create greater value for customers and society as a whole, Liu said. Huawei aims to build closer cooperation between industry and academia, facilitate communication, and provide high-quality real-world industrial challenges for students and scholars, accelerating real-world applications.
The goal of this year's French challenge is to design a packet scheduling algorithm that provides deterministic latency, said Jeremy Legay, chief expert of network optimization at Huawei's Paris Research Center. Legay had competed in an internal algorithm competition a few years ago, shortly after joining Huawei. “It was a great opportunity to gain practical experience on real problems and develop the best solutions,” he recalled. Legay encouraged future participants to follow their own intuition, remain curious about new problems, and take advantage of the opportunities Tech Arena provides to discuss with Huawei engineers.
Wang Fusang giving a speech at the launch event
First held in 2017, Tech Arena is a series of technology competitions sponsored and organized by Huawei research labs around the world. By the end of 2023, more than 6,700 students from over 52 universities have participated in Tech Arena.
Former Tech Arena winners Dr. Malik Tiomoco (left), Francisco Machado Neto and Hussan Wang (right)
Past and current Tech Arena participants spoke at the launch event. Dr. Malik Tiomoco, 2021 Huawei Tech Arena winner and senior engineer at Huawei, reflected that Tech Arena helped him discover his passion and ultimately his career path. Hussan Wang, 2022 Huawei Tech Arena winner, said he gained deeper technical insights and developed friendships in the process of winning that year's top prize. Wang is currently enrolled in a joint program offered by the Paris-Mines Comité and Huawei. And Francisco Machado Neto, 2024 participant from École Polytechnique IPP, shared his excitement for his journey in this year's challenge.
Huawei will invest 23.4% of its revenue in R&D in 2023, ranking 5th in the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard 2023. Huawei operates a network of European R&D research centers composed mainly of local researchers, jointly promoting the development of local science and technology, industry, and talent.
For more information on the 2024 Tech Arena competition, please see below.
Minisite: https://www.huawei.com/minisite/techarena2024/
Event video: https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/multimedia/videos/2024/tech-arena-launch
