Liu Chang (pseudonym) doesn't deny that one of his purposes for coming to Shenzhen Zero One College (hereinafter referred to as Zero One College) was to "skip classes."
As he speaks, he's sitting at a table in the corridor on the third floor of the Owl Laboratory at Zero One College, attentively eating a simple boxed meal. It's already 8 p.m., and the corridor is quiet. Next to Liu Chang is a bookshelf filled with various books, and on the other side of the bookshelf are several scattered beanbag chairs and open backpacks, indicating that students were chatting here not long ago. But at this moment, the owners of the backpacks have left. They should be in a classroom or some open space on either side of the corridor, listening to a lecture on the differences between digital photography and optical photography, or sharing experiences and insights on pet care with a returned female Ph.D.…
Tonight is the "Owl Fantastic Night" at Zero One College. As usual, the college arranges various interesting lectures and sharing activities for students to choose from. However, because he was busy with experiments all afternoon, Liu Chang didn't have time for dinner, so he's "filling his stomach" first now, he says with a smile.
"Being able to do experiments with gusto" is the biggest surprise Liu Chang has encountered since coming to Zero One College.
As a sophomore majoring in computer science at a "Double First-Class" university in China, Liu Chang could also have some practical experience at his own school, but he felt "unsatisfied." "Computer science is already a very practical subject. With so much theoretical content and no practical courses, I find it uninteresting."
So, wanting to avoid too many "theory classes," Liu Chang chose to spend his winter vacation in Shenzhen, hundreds of kilometers away from his school's city. It was during the days when Zero One College organized the "Winter School," gathering hundreds of students like him who hoped to "get their hands dirty."
What games should Martians play?
As a public innovative college founded by the Shenzhen Municipal Government, Zero One College was established in 2021. Zheng Quanshui, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Tsinghua University, served as its founding dean, dedicated to the long-term and in-depth cultivation of top innovative talents.
In the year when Zero One College was founded, Wu Koutian had just entered university.
Although Wu Koutian's university belonged to the top tier in China, his entrance exam scores were not outstanding. After entering university, he originally wanted to do well in exams but couldn't achieve his goal. "During that time, I was always in a state of distress, unable to see any light."
It wasn't until the summer vacation of his freshman year that Wu Koutian "saw some hope" through being selected for the summer school at Zero One College.
At the summer school, students were divided into several groups, each needing to independently set a research project and conduct independent research. Wu Koutian's group chose the topic of "heat dissipation structure of three-dimensional chips."
This topic originated from a casual remark by a senior assistant at a symposium: "Most of the current chips are two-dimensional. If they were made three-dimensional, there would be heat dissipation issues that are difficult to solve."
"We really want to solve it," Wu Koutian said.
"A good problem is a crucial core of talent cultivation," said Huang Licheng, assistant dean and head of the Strategic Development Department of Zero One College, in an interview with the Chinese Science Bulletin. Zero One College is like a platform dedicated to bringing together a large number of students with innovative potential and internal drive, top global mentors, and focusing on future-oriented and frontier challenging problems, organizing students to conduct "advanced research - in-depth learning" on this basis. To achieve this goal, students first need to find a good problem.
At Zero One College, the problems students come up with are diverse, but they all share one thing in common—they are genuinely interested.
One high school student left a deep impression on Huang Licheng. At a summer school, the research topic of the student's group was "Mars exploration," but he admitted that he "didn't understand much about Mars knowledge."
"Zero One doesn't require you to already know a lot of knowledge, but it requires you to discover your inner passion here," the research coach asked the student, "What are your hobbies?"
"I like playing games."
"Okay, do you think Mars and games can be combined?"
"I think people on Mars would be lonely. They would need games, a special kind of game," the student's excitement was evident in his words.
Two days later, based on this idea, the student designed a poster. In the poster, he conceived what kind of games, social interactions, and interactions with Mars astronauts would be needed. His presentation surprised everyone, including his parents.
"In this kind of environment, you never know what surprises students will bring to you," Huang Licheng said.
Wu Koutian's story is also similar—his group consisted of two college students and one high school student. After determining the topic, the three of them conceived a model similar to a Rubik's Cube, but building this model involved hardware materials and programming issues. As for the former, they could use the resources of the college; as for programming, with the help of the college, they self-studied related knowledge and also sought help from a student in another group who was proficient in coding. In the end, they really made a controllable moving model.
After going through the complete research process from proposing a question to searching for literature, from starting to work to mid-term defense, from presentation to reporting, Wu Koutian at this point is no longer in a state of "distress" as before, but is full of motivation to continue on the path of scientific research. "I think scientific research is a very interesting thing."
After the end of the summer school activities, Wu Koutian returned to his own university and quickly applied to join the laboratory of a teacher at the university, starting targeted scientific research exploration with clear goals. "Others do research when they have spare time for studying, but even in the situation of 'no spare time for studying,' I still want to do research," he recalled. Simultaneously, he maintained close communication with the teachers at Zero One Academy, sharing his incremental progress in research with them. Through these exchanges, he not only enhanced his research abilities but also significantly improved his academic performance. Now, on the brink of graduating with his bachelor's degree, he has not only successfully published his academic paper but has also become the first student at Zero One Academy to pass the defense of the "Senior Undergraduate Researcher Program."
Instances like Wu Koutian's are not uncommon at Zero One Academy. However, can a simple research project really wield such transformative power? Is the intention behind Zero One Academy merely to provide students with a "project," or is there more to it?
The Intention Behind the "Restarting the Drum and Starting Anew"
To understand this, we need to go back over a decade to an incident experienced by Zheng Quanshui. In 2007, Zheng was the head of the Department of Engineering Mechanics at Tsinghua University. During graduation season that year, over a dozen students were unable to graduate due to academic issues, causing him great distress, which was also felt by the entire department faculty. Consequently, a major pedagogical discussion ensued within the department.
However, three months later, Zheng decided to halt this discussion. He remarked, "While everyone agreed that the status quo needed to change, there was a complete lack of consensus on how to do so. Continuing the discussion seemed futile." The core issue, as Zheng saw it, was that some teachers' perceptions were skewed—they believed that the students were not capable and that better students were required. They also felt the need to further strengthen the training in professional courses, especially those for which they were responsible. However, at that time, the students' workload in professional courses was already excessive.
After much contemplation, Zheng decided to seek out a group of like-minded teachers within Tsinghua University to initiate a pilot program aimed at fostering top-notch innovative engineering talents. This initiative directly led to the establishment of the Qian Xuesen Mechanics Class at Tsinghua University in 2009, also known as the "Qian Class."
"The educational model of the Qian Class is a typical research-oriented learning approach," explained Ren Jianxun, a professor at Tsinghua University who served as the overall head of the Qian Class and later Zero One Academy.
In his view, the learning paradigm for Chinese children from primary school to university has hardly changed—attending classes, listening to lectures, completing assignments, submitting them, and taking exams, in a repetitive cycle until undergraduate or graduate graduation.
"But we don't 'play' like that," he said. The Qian Class is dedicated to reforming the students' curriculum, especially reducing the burden of professional courses, and allocating the saved time to students for independent research. "We start from the most basic skills, teaching the children of the Qian Class like masters instructing apprentices, explaining what research is, how to find topics of interest, how to conduct research around those topics, until they publish papers."
Compared to traditional classroom teaching, the greatest advantage of the Qian Class model lies in integrating students' knowledge acquisition with scientific exploration. After several years of implementation, this model has yielded excellent results. Ren Jianxun proudly told the "Chinese Science News," "Some students from the Qian Class, upon graduating with their bachelor's degrees, have academic abilities equivalent to those of doctoral candidates."
However, in 2021, after running smoothly for 12 years, Zheng Quanshui, the chief professor of the Qian Class, came to Shenzhen, thousands of miles away from Tsinghua University, to establish Zero One Academy in collaboration with the local government. With a similar dedication to nurturing top-notch innovative talents, what was the purpose behind this "restarting the drum and starting anew"?
Ren Jianxun pointed out a very direct reason—talent selection.
Due to its birth within the Tsinghua campus, the Qian Class faced a practical problem in talent selection. It was necessary to select students who met the admission criteria of Tsinghua University. This meant that even if a student met the selection criteria of the Qian Class, if they could not pass the entrance examination of Tsinghua University, they were destined to be unable to participate in the Qian Class training model.
As one of the top universities in China, the students admitted to Tsinghua University are already outstanding. Are these students not enough for the Qian Class to select from?
This involves the Qian Class's unique criteria for "innovative talents."
Zheng Quanshui roughly categorized talents into two types—X-type and A-type talents. He clearly explained the difference between the two in an article—
X-type talents are those who, driven by intrinsic motivation, are willing to seek the most passionate goals, fully devote themselves to exploration, are not afraid of failure, and have open minds. They are more adaptable to the current era of explosive knowledge, full of unknowns, and rapid change. Our traditional education is better at cultivating externally motivated, conservative talents (i.e., A-type talents). Such talents can excel in a closed, slow-changing system (i.e., getting straight A's in every course), but they often struggle to achieve disruptive innovation because innovation requires embracing failure, which A-type talents often cannot accept.
Clearly, whether in the Qian Class or Zero One Academy, Zheng Quanshui hopes to find and cultivate X-type talents. However, under the traditional college entrance examination model, such talents often find it difficult to stand out. Therefore, breaking free from the shackles of the traditional education model and selecting X-type talents unconventionally became one of his fundamental aspirations in establishing Zero One Academy.
However, this is not Zheng Quanshui's only consideration on this matter. It can even be said that this is not his most important consideration.
Not "building tall buildings," but "planting big trees"
When asked about the differences between Zero One Academy and his current university, many students often mention one word—environment.
"The atmosphere here makes me feel very comfortable." Liu Chao, a pseudonym, comes from a "Double First-Class" university in China. This is already his second time participating in the winter school at Zero One Academy. Since childhood, he has loved tinkering with small inventions, and he originally thought that after entering university, he would have more time to devote to his hobbies. However, reality has left him somewhat disappointed.
"The classmates around me talk most about GPA every day, as if all aspects of university life revolve around GPA. But I don't want that. I want to invent things, I want to do experiments," he said. Such thoughts make him feel somewhat like an "outsider" among his peers. However, upon arriving at Zero One Academy, he suddenly found more like-minded people.
In Zheng Quanshui's view, students like Liu Chao are typical X-type talents—daring and eager to innovate, and not your typical "good students" in the conventional sense. These students are a minority in any school, even in top domestic universities.
"This touches upon a core issue in talent development—should learning be teacher-centered or student-centered," Zheng Quanshui said, "and the answer to this question is not difficult. If it's the latter, peer learning among students becomes crucial. However, if an X-type talent lives in an environment surrounded by mostly A-type talents and is subjected to evaluations and assessment systems suited for A-type talents, the outcome is predictable."
This is precisely the "norm" for most universities in China.
So, the true intention behind the establishment of Zero One Academy couldn't be clearer—to create a space where X-type talents, who are a minority in various universities, can gather densely through different forms like "summer schools," "autumn study trips," "winter schools," "spring programs," etc., making them realize they are not "outsiders." And when like-minded individuals gather beyond a critical mass, it sparks a "creative explosion."
"We've created an educational model here that suits their growth, stimulating their inner passions and curiosity while maximizing their talents and creativity," said Huang Licheng.
As for what kind of educational model—
"Our traditional education often goes like this," Zheng Quanshui drew a vertical rectangle on the blackboard, "nurturing talent is like building a skyscraper. You need to lay a deep foundation first before constructing the upper floors."
But the problem is, industries are changing rapidly today. By the time a student graduates, the industry they enter might have undergone drastic changes. In such a scenario, how much of those massive "foundations" laid in the classroom are relevant?
"Moreover, laying the 'foundation' is often not voluntary for students; they're not interested. This makes a lot of the 'foundation-laying' courses become formalized 'busywork,'" Zheng Quanshui said, illustrating the era of industrialized talent development.
Zero One Academy, however, believes in nurturing talents like "growing a big tree."
"We treat each student as a seed with inherent talents. What they will eventually become, we don't know and don't need to know. We just need to provide them with suitable soil. Especially, hang a not-too-high but bright enough 'sun' in the sky. Seeds like sunshine and will grow towards it while naturally rooting downwards. The higher they grow, the deeper the roots. When the 'seed' grows into a 'sapling' and reaches a certain height, we'll give them a bigger 'sun,'" using this metaphor, Zheng Quanshui explained, gesturing energetically.
In this analogy, the "soil" represents everything Zero One Academy can offer to students—broad research perspectives, training in scientific thinking and methods, an atmosphere of self-discovery, suitable research conditions, access to quality teachers and inspiring peers, and an innovative atmosphere for free exploration… As for the "sun" guiding their growth, it's scientific problems that students find very interesting and "reachable."
"So, for the innovative education of these kids, we need to go back from the 'industrial age' to the 'agricultural age,'" Zheng Quanshui said, gesturing vigorously.
To achieve this return, Zero One Academy sets a major challenging problem scenario every year and invites around 10 top scientists from China and even internationally to design the research segment of the challenge problem together.
During this process, students can engage in open-minded collisions of thought in their interested disciplines with mentors, propose research ideas, and turn them into prototype studies through individual efforts and teamwork, followed by a period of research work.
During this time, research coaches from Zero One Academy carefully observe, encourage, provide appropriate guidance to students, and prompt corrections when deviations occur in their research paths. Besides, students at Zero One Academy enjoy ample research freedom.
"Can you imagine, as an ordinary college student, being able to exchange ideas with a prominent academic like Professor Zheng anytime, or having a professor from Tsinghua University help you install engineering software?" one student conducting experiments said with a smile during an interview.
From "external blood transfusion" to "self-blood supply"
It is worth mentioning that Zero One Academy not only enrolls college students. In fact, since high school students have not undergone complete exam-oriented training before the college entrance examination, their scientific imagination is more abundant. Zero One Academy specifically arranges research experience camps, summer school youth camps, and other related programs for high school students.
Clearly, Zheng Quanshui hopes to cultivate an "original forest" of innovative talents on this land of Shenzhen, which is full of innovation genes. Since the "seeds" of this forest come from external schools (high schools or universities), this determines that Zero One Academy must form a cooperative ecosystem with the outside world.
"This will bring some consequences," Ren Jianxun told the "Chinese Science News." For example, when students are at Zero One Academy, it's challenging for them to balance their school's curriculum; after returning to school, they often continue to complete research projects from Zero One Academy, which adds to their academic and research burdens.
Wu Koutian once frankly stated that, to balance credits and research, he had "almost no concept of 'weekends'" for a long time.
In Ren Jianxun's view, this is a very real problem. "Currently, domestic universities generally have high credit requirements for students, which takes up a lot of their time and energy, leaving relatively little time for them to engage in independent research." Over the years, Ren Jianxun has encountered numerous incidents where students had to drop out of Zero One Academy due to excessive academic and credit pressure. However, Zheng Quanshui doesn't see the issue of credits as unsolvable. As early as 2021, Zero One College, together with top domestic universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, University of Science and Technology of China, as well as high schools like Shenzhen Middle School, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School, and Renmin University High School, established the "Zero One College Innovation Education Alliance." Over the years, Zheng Quanshui has been facilitating credit recognition between the college and alliance schools, and significant progress has been made.
The formation of this alliance is not just about solving credit issues; there are broader long-term considerations behind it. As a new type of innovative college, the birth of Zero One College was somewhat rushed. Zheng Quanshui vividly remembers that on the day the college officially opened in 2021, interior decoration work was still ongoing at 3 a.m. In the following years, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the college's development.
However, in his plan, the initial "haste" is the price the college must pay for rapid development in the future. "We will take 4 to 5 years to establish a relatively mature talent cultivation model and create a model effect among sister colleges. Based on this, Zero One College will become a 'pilot' for this talent cultivation model and spread its experience to the surrounding areas," Zheng Quanshui said. He believes that the initial accumulation is the most challenging because it involves many institutional breakthroughs. Once these breakthroughs are made and a brand is formed, the subsequent impact will naturally follow.
In fact, Zero One College's experience in talent cultivation has already gained attention from universities such as Dalian University of Technology and Harbin Institute of Technology. In 2023, Zero One College held three teacher training sessions in cities including Beijing, Dalian, and Shenzhen, attracting more than 50 universities nationwide. In July of the same year, Zheng Quanshui was also appointed as the chief consultant for the Qian Lingxi Science and Technology Basic Excellence Program at Dalian University of Technology.
According to Huang Licheng, this model of promotion and replication is also crucial for the healthy development of the Zero One ecosystem. "Currently, the college's funding comes from the Shenzhen municipal government, but ultimately we need to develop our own 'hematopoietic function' to provide education services and products that are popular in society," he told the China Science Daily. He emphasized that the most important value of Zero One College is to create a unique innovation-driven education model. Around this model, there are many aspects to work on.
"For the past three years, we have been focusing on building 'products' around curriculum development, including selection for summer schools, national academician laboratory study tours in the autumn semester, acceleration camps in the winter school, and project practice in the spring semester," Huang Licheng said. He explained that once the Zero One innovation-driven education model and products mature, the next step is to use this as a platform to co-create a win-win ecosystem. Schools, students, as well as companies and venture capital firms, can join this ecosystem and find suitable ways to cooperate to meet their demands for talents and technology.
For example, different schools, teachers, and companies can establish studios in line with the principles of innovative education. By participating in various innovative educational experiences, they can seek longer-term cooperative development. As this ecosystem matures, the "stickiness" between all parties and the ecosystem will increase, and everyone can benefit from the educational value it generates, as well as scientific research results. More resources from the government, industry, academia, research, and even finance will pay attention to and join in. "In this way, Zero One College can cover a wider range of innovative talent seedlings and support their long-term growth," Huang Licheng said with a smile.
A Paradise for Idealists
Achieving its own "sustainable development" is not the ultimate goal that Zero One College pursues. When interviewed, Zheng Quanshui openly admitted that the ultimate purpose of founding Zero One College is to "change the world and benefit humanity." This ideal is also reflected in the name of the college.
"Science, in essence, is a kind of useless knowledge, and its utility does not need to be considered. But the science of Zero One College needs to be considered because we want to have an impact on the world," he explained. "'Zero' is just something imagined, just an 'idea,' but 'One' has practical significance. From 'Zero' to 'One' is the process of putting ideas into practice and ultimately changing the world.
Therefore, Zero One College has always advocated for students to pose "big questions" rather than trying to "patch up" surface problems. During a study tour one fall, the college organized students to visit and learn at the Low-Altitude Economy Laboratory hosted by Professor Yang Jun at the High Institute of Electronics and Technology (Shenzhen). During the group research and discussion session, students enthusiastically expressed their desire to improve certain types of batteries, design certain types of spiral rotors, reduce noise, and increase reliability...
Their discussion was then interrupted by the accompanying teacher. Seeing the puzzled expressions of the students, the teacher said, "At the level of these technical details, it's impossible for you to understand them more deeply than master's or doctoral students. During the study tour, the college not only hopes you broaden your horizons and discover what you love but also hopes you develop systematic thinking in new fields and scenarios and pose big questions."
The teacher then posed some thought-provoking questions, such as, based on the concept of low-altitude economy, what is low-altitude, what is economy, what are the differences between low-altitude, high-altitude, mid-altitude, ground, and waterways, where is the supply in the economy, where is the demand, what mismatches exist, what future scenarios will match... As for more specific questions, such as what kind of vehicle is needed, how to deal with what kind of payload, what kind of business format and scenarios can be created, what problems can be solved, what deficiencies can be remedied, what are the core technologies, what industries do they correspond to, what are the current thresholds, what are the advantages and disadvantages, etc.
After two hours of discussion, the students distilled more than 50 technical application scenarios. "I was extremely surprised; each of these scenarios has vast development potential," the teacher said with a smile. "I told the students to 'keep it confidential' because each scenario they proposed could potentially incubate into a startup company." In the heart of every Zero One Academy student, there's a flicker of a "big idea."
During an interview with the China Science Daily, Zhang Haodong, currently assisting Professor Wang Hongzhang in materials science research at the Shenzhen International Graduate School of Tsinghua University, discussed their recent project titled "Entropy Innovation Materials - Treasure of Future Manufacturing Industry," which was selected for the 2023 Guizhou Guian University Student Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Project.
When asked about his aspirations, this junior student from Guizhou Institute of Technology told the China Science Daily that he aims to revolutionize China's materials industry. His determination grew stronger when he learned that due to foreign monopolies, the unit price of importing a certain polymer material into China is 100,000 CNY, while its actual cost is only a few thousand CNY.
"In a sense, we aspire to make Zero One Academy a utopia for idealists," Ren Jianxun expressed. He emphasized his desire to guide and encourage every student entering the academy to leave with a grand ideal. This, he said, is what he most hopes to see.
Zheng Quanshui admitted to being an idealist himself but preferred to add "with a sense of mission" before "idealism." "Our mission is to change the world. That's my mission and the mission of Zero One Academy. This will never change," he asserted.
