Guided jointly by Professor Zhong Lei and Associate Professor Zhang Yuequn from TUT School of Art & Design, graduate student Zhang Qingyue of the 2023 class in the art program designed the work “Emergency Air Cushion Bandage”, which stood out from over 7,000 entries from more than 72 countries worldwide and won the 2025 German IF Student Design Award.

This emergency air cushion bandage is designed to address the problem of secondary injuries that may occur when rescuers cannot quickly assess victims’ conditions during natural disasters, such as earthquakes. The bandage contains multiple airbags that are normally flat to save storage space and include a pouch of acetic acid solution and sodium bicarbonate.

During on-site rescue, rescuers could compress the acetic acid pouch, and let the acid reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to produce carbon dioxide gas, which rapidly inflates and tightens the airbags, effectively stabilizing the victim’s fracture site and preventing secondary injury.

The German IF Design Award, the German Red Dot Award, and the American IDEA Award are collectively known as the “world’s top three design awards” and are hailed as the “Oscars” of the design world. Among them, the IF Student Design Award is organized by Germany’s longest-established IF Industrie Forum Design and aims to discover rising young designers worldwide, targeting current students and design talents within two years of graduation.

As an international top-tier competition, the IF Student Design Award is one of the largest and most prestigious competitions for young designers globally; its selection criteria and philosophy are known for being “independent, rigorous, and reliable”, making it a trendsetter for the development of the global design industry. It not only provides young designers with a platform to showcase innovation and talent but also serves as an important benchmark and symbol in the field of design.