Four students from the Chinese mainland received gold and bronze Young Inventors Awards on Tuesday in a ceremony at the Arts House in Singapore.

The results of the Fifth Young Inventors Awards 2004, organized by the Asian Wall Street Journal in association with Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific, were released by Dow Jones' China operation in Beijing Wednesday.

All four Chinese students are currently pursuing postgraduate degrees at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Gold award-winner Wang Qijie had invented an innovative and ingenious way to build cheaper optical interleavers/deleavers, which make it easier for fiber-optic networks to carry more data at less cost to customers.

The bronze prize went to Liang Xiaojun, Sun Yi and Zhang Xuming, who developed a chip-based diagnostic kit that can quickly detect cancer in patients long before symptoms are exhibited, with obvious potential benefits.

The silver award went to Randall Law from the National University of Singapore for the invention of an ultra fast laser that can cut nanoscale grooves. This could help make the construction of microscopic machinery faster and cheaper, and enable more circuitry to fit onto increasingly smaller chips.

A total of 12 scientific and technological inventions from Singapore, Australia, India and the Philippines were selected as finalists from 87 nominations from Asia-Pacific higher education institutions.

Yang Huiying, another Chinese student from the same Singaporean university as the gold and bronze winners, was also short-listed.

The award winners each received Hewlett-Packard computer equipment and an all-expenses paid trip to the company's labs in the US. In addition, the Asian Wall Street Journal will contribute cash prizes to their universities.

The Young Inventors Awards began in 2000, aiming to foster the spirit of invention among students in the Asia-Pacific region by recognizing and supporting outstanding efforts or projects that enhance quality of life in a significant or meaningful way. The awards were organized by the Far East Economic Review in association with Hewlett-Packard in the previous four years but changed sponsor this year.

(Xinhua News Agency January 27, 2005)