Li Xiaoyan, president of Henan province-based Huanghuai University (HHU), is proud that his institution has helped save people's lives in 2022 and 2023 with its high-tech achievements in landslide deformation and technical research.

These achievements have been used to successfully predict two landslides — one in July 2022 in the northern part of Erzhuangke village, Nanshi subdistrict at Baota district of Yan'an in Shaanxi province, and another at the district's Wangjiagou village in September 2023.

Due to the successful predictions, local residents were evacuated in advance and casualties were avoided.

Located in the prefecture-level city of Zhumadian and in the Dabie Mountains region, HHU is the only applied science and engineering undergraduate university in southern Henan. It was established in 1973.

To build on its distinctive features, Li said the application-oriented HHU took up various disciplines as the basis, setting up schools including machinery and energy engineering, animation, architecture and civil engineering, biology and food engineering, medicine, chemistry and pharmaceutical engineering, and intelligent manufacturing.

During the past decade, it has cultivated more than 170,000 high-quality applied talent, with over 60 percent employed in Henan, providing strong support for developing the Dabie Mountains region, Li said.

Meanwhile, to help launch enterprise-led collaboration between industries, universities and research institutes, the university also established 32 collaborative innovation centers, leading to local economic and social progress, said professor Yu Miao.

For example, HHU's double quaternary ammonium salt compounds based highly efficient anti-scaling and oil displacement agents have been used on the Shenhua Ningmei 4 million metric ton-per year coal indirect liquefaction project, helping enterprises save more than 200 million yuan ($28 million) in costs, Yu said.

He added that its "high sensitivity fiber optic monitoring probe technology" has helped improve environment monitoring instruments with independent intellectual property rights, high sensitivity, good stability, excellent cost-effectiveness and long service life, leading to economic benefits of 1 billion yuan for the market.