The team from Sias University finished third in the 16th "Challenge Cup" National College Students' Extracurricular Academic Science & Technology Contest. Sias was the only private university from the province of Henan in the competition. The third-place finish is Sias' best achievement in the competition.

Since the announcement for the "Challenge Cup" in December 2018, Sias University's Communist Youth League organized the recruitment of students for the competition. There was a positive response from academic schools and residential colleges, particularly the School of Business and the School of Electronics and Information Engineering.

The projects that made it through the elimination process included "Research on Poverty Alleviation and Rural Tourism under the Strategy of Rural Revitalization in Henan Province"; "Exploration on the Path of Cross-Border E-Commerce to Help Revitalize Rural Areas: Taking Henan Province as an Example"; "The Most Powerful Brain"; and "Smart Windows". Sias won both the first and second prizes at the provincial level. However, the project that made it to the National finals was titled "Research on Constructing a Long-term Mechanism of Poverty Interruption under the Framework of Sustainable Development - Taking Luoyang District of Henan Province as an Example", where it achieved a third-place finish.

The "Challenge Cup" series is known as the "Olympic" event for Chinese college students' scientific and technological innovation and entrepreneurship. Not only is it one of the most prestigious, widely represented, and widely recognized competitions, but it is also the most popular national competition for college students in China.