On the morning of December 12th, the 15thDragonDesignFoundationAward (DDF Award) Ceremony was held in the Great Hall of the People, Beijing. Ms. YU Lei, a teacher from the School of Mechanical Engineering, USTB,stood out from thousands of young designers and was nominated for the "DDF Award: China's Top 10 Outstanding Youths in Design Industry".

Established with the support of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, the DDF Award was approved by the National Office for Science and Technology Award in 2011 to become a national-level award.Created with the goal of promoting the design industry and cultivating designers, over the past 15 years the DDFAward has witnessed the rapid growth of the Chinese design industry and received a lot of attention and endorsementfrom a large number of industry insiders who have fully devoted their efforts to itssuccess.

This year nominees were selected based on their work beingrespectful of nature, protecting the ecosystem and having innovative design.The assessment considered nominees spanning 19 fields from 21 provinces and municipalities. Evaluating potential nominees based on their work making social and economic advances as green technology, 20 young designers were nominated for the DDFAward this year.

The ceremony was hosted by the Dragon Design Foundation. ZENG Xianlin, former Minister of the Ministry of Light Industry, MA Wenpu, former Deputy Minister of the International Department, Central Committee of CPC, ZHU Tao, former President of the China Industrial Design Association, MAO Guanglie, former Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress, XU Ronglie, former Chief Engineer of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the PRC, LI Bingren, former Chief Economist of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the PRC, DAI Gongxing, former Deputy Director of theAll-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, HE Jingtang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, MENG Jianmin, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, WU Zhiqiang, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, ZHU Ming, Academician of theInternational Eurasian Academy of Sciences, LOU Yongqi, Academician of theRoyal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, YU Xiaodong, Deputy Director-General of the Industrial Policy Department, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the PRC, WU Kai, Senior Adviser of theWIPO Office in China and other leaders attended the ceremony and presented awardsto the nominees.

Ms. YU Lei graduated from theCentral Academy of Fine Arts andreceived a MA in Narrative Environment from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (UK).She earned a Ph.D. in Management of Cultural Industry from Central South University in 2017. Ms. YU is currently working as a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design, USTB, and has a personal studio named YU STUDIO. She exhibited her project ‘The Personal Interpreter project’ (2012) at the Petrie Museum, London, and participated in the‘Speaker's Corner project’, ‘Freud Museum project’, ‘Larnaca project’ and other projects in both China and abroad. In the last three years, Ms. YU has published 6 papers, among which 4 are classified as‘highly cited’ CSSCI papers. and hosted ‘Research on the Development Model of Creative Industry in the Era of Mobile Internet’, a project supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Universities of the Ministry of Education of China. She is now a member of the National College InternetTechnology and Intelligent Media Design Committee, a member of the Council for the CSU Alumni Association for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, and a member of the Council for Audio and Visual Art Education Professional Committee at the China Television Art Exchange Association.