TI Cup helps Chinese electronic engineering professionals to give full play to their strengths

Zhang Zezhi's three-person team won the "TI Cup" championship

When he was seven years old, Zhang Zezhi watched "Iron Man" with his brother and became fascinated with electronic products. He often disassembled his toys and electronic products at home to study the internal structure and principles. At the same time, he also found that he was very talented in mathematics and science.

Fifteen years later, Zhang Zezhi and two other team members from Dalian University of Technology defeated more than 17,300 teams and won the "TI Cup", a well-known domestic electronic design competition. From 2018 to 2027, the National Undergraduate Electronic Design Competition, now called the "TI Cup", is sponsored and exclusively sponsored by Texas Instruments to help science and engineering students strengthen their engineering design skills in practice.

“I really enjoy electronic design competitions. It’s one of my hobbies,” said Zhang Zezhi, a senior majoring in electronic engineering.

Driving innovation

Our company is responsible for providing funding, laboratory learning environment, design tools and guidance for this competition. In addition, we have helped establish the National Undergraduate Electronic Design Competition Training Network, which currently has nearly 54,000 registered members. Students and teachers can learn technology, share ideas, or prepare for competitions on the website, which is also an important initiative of TI University Program.

"This competition can cultivate students' sense of innovation and teamwork spirit, and can also improve their design capabilities and prepare them for future employment," said Wu Zhenyu, vice dean of the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Dalian University of Technology.

This competition has been held for more than 20 years and attracted more than 52,000 students from more than 1,100 universities in 2019. The award ceremony was held in Beijing on December 14 of the same year.

learning experience

The competition consists of eight common projects for electronic engineering students. After four days of competition, the judges will select the winning team based on the performance of the contestants' designed devices.

Zhang and his team developed a device to test and measure amplifier circuits. They studied and used several TI products, including the OPA189 and OPA2228 precision operational amplifiers, the TPS7A4700 ultra-low-noise linear regulator, and the MSP432E401Y SimpleLink™ microcontroller. 

Winning the competition not only brings honors, but also allows members of the winning team to be admitted to graduate school without taking an entrance exam. Zhang Zezhi plans to find a job in the field of industrial robots and intelligent manufacturing after graduating from graduate school.

Zhang Zezhi said: "For competition, it is not only the result that is important, but also the experience. In this process, I learned a lot of things that I could not learn in class."