Four Chinese mainland students received the gold and bronze awards of the 5th Young Inventors Awards 2004, which is hosted by Asian Wall Street Journal (AWSJ) in association with Hewlett-Packard Asia Pacific, said sources with the China operation of Dow Jones here Wednesday.

All the four award-winning students are currently pursuing postgraduate degrees at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NYTU).

Winner Wang Qijie received the gold award for discovering an innovative and simple way to build cheaper optical interleavers and de-interleavers, which make it easier for fiber-optic networksto carry more data and the services cheaper for customers.

The bronze award went to Liang Xiaojun, Sun Yi and Zhang Xuming,who developed a chip-based diagnostic kit that can detect cancer instantly, long before the patients' bodies demonstrate any signs of illness, says a written statement from the China operation of Dow Jones, to which AWSJ belongs.

The silver award was given to Randall Law, from National University of Singapore for the invention of an ultrafast laser nano-patterning device.

A total of 12 scientific and technological inventions from Singapore, Australia, India and Philippines were selected as finalists from 87 nominations from Asia-Pacific higher education institutions.

Yang Huiying, another Chinese student from the same Singaporean University, was also shortlisted.

The Young Inventors Awards began in 2000, aiming to foster the spirit of invention among students in Asia-Pacific region by recognizing and supporting outstanding efforts or projects that enhance quality of life in a significant or meaningful way. The awards were organized by Far East Economic Review (FEER) in association with Hewlett-Packard in the previous four years but changed sponsor this year.