From millimeter-level precision at the headwaters of the Yangtze River to the aroma of oil tea in ethnic villages; from AI code cracking the “digital isolation” in resettlement communities to igniting a spark for science in remote mountain village schools... During the summer of 2025, over 6,000 students and faculty from CUG traveled across the country, conducting fieldwork and immersing themselves in society.
By the Tuotuo River at an altitude of 4,500 meters, the wind was piercingly cold. Members of the School of Marine Science steadily operated GNSS receivers. This is the source of the Yangtze River, and their mission was to establish key nodes for an ecological monitoring network of the Yangtze river.
“Altitude sickness made us dizzy, but data collection had to be precise down to the millimeter!” said LIU Zheng, a second-year doctoral student. For 5 consecutive hours, they focused intently in the thin air, ensuring every signal received was stable and reliable.
Conducting precise measurements at the Tuotuo River
At the same time, the team from the School of Earth Resources traveled 3,400 kilometers upstream from Wuhan, focusing on the historically scarred legacy mines along the Yangtze River.
In Xikuangshan Mine, Loudi City, Hunan Province — known as the “World’s Antimony Capital” — the team witnessed an “ecological miracle” powered by technology: mountains of waste slag transformed into arable land, barren hills once ravaged by over-mining now clad in lush green, the entire mining area undergoing a dramatic shift toward an eco-friendly scenic zone. “This convinced me that mineral development and ecological protection can truly coexist!” exclaimed team member MENG Weiyan.
Investigating the Xikuangshan Mine, the “World’s Antimony Capital”
Members of the School of Computer Science went door-to-door conducting surveys across 145 resettlement communities in Wuhan.
Conducting system debugging work on-site in the community
Over 6,000 questionnaires and nearly a thousand interviews revealed the plight of elderly residents trapped in “digital isolation”: challenges in repair service requests, event notification accessibility, and usability of smartphone interfaces. Using these findings, they refined a “three-end collaborative” AI system: a resident-end dialect voice recognition directs straight to service terminals; a community-end smart scheduling engine improves response efficiency by 60%; and a government-end data dashboard enables precise policy navigation. The system is now operational in 23 communities, helping tens of thousands of seniors overcome digital barriers.
In Xianning City, the team from the School of Engineering “CT scans” of mountain slopes. Using drones for 3D oblique photography of high-risk slopes, they completed slope stability calculations for rainfall recurrence periods ranging from 10 to 100 years, producing a detailed risk assessment report that provides technical support for local geological disaster prevention and mitigation.
Meanwhile, 32 science popularization volunteers from 6 schools weaved through the streets of Wuhan, diving into 252 “summer schools” across 16 districts to lead city children on a “mineral fantasy journey”. They cleverly introduced pencil leads (graphite) and window glass (quartz) into the classroom: “The pencil lead that writes your homework and the glass that lights up the room. Science is all around us!" Children pierced together mineral puzzles, touched rock samples, decoded earth’s secrets, and read aloud their commitment to resource protection.
Volunteers guiding children in observing mineral specimens
From the roof of the world to the heart of local communities, these journeys are far more than academic exercises. They are a testament to a new generation’s commitment to applying knowledge with compassion and precision. The mountains and rivers they measured are not just lines on a map, but the very fabric of a future they are helping to build — more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient. This is how youth is shaped; this is how a better world begins.
(Edited and translated from the Chinese version)
