The First International Student Project Marathon Ended at Polytechnic University

The international student project marathon has come to an end. The final forum was held at Polytechnic University, where participants from SPbPU and its strategic partner Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) presented the results of their work. In total, six international teams took part in the innovative international project. Students, postgraduate students, young scientists and teachers for many months have been working on serious problems from various research spheres; they presented the results of those at the final forum in the presence of an expert commission. The competent jury included Vice Rector for International Relations D.G. ARSENIEV, technical director of AUTODESK Russia Peter MANIN, president of the St. Petersburg branch of PMI Maxim GRISHIN, coordinator of student mobility program from TU Graz Lena NEUREITER, project management coordinator from SPbPU Nadezhda TSVETKOVA. Welcoming the participants, Dmitry ARSENIEV emphasized that it would not be easy to choose the winner: “The teams gathered at SPbPU are cream of the cream. There are no weak players here. During the year, you worthily solved the most difficult tasks. I hope that international student design marathons will become our constant practice, and next year we will bring together even more participants”.

The projects that international teams worked on impressed with a variety of scientific areas: the participants worked on NoSQL database management systems; created an intelligent system for forecasting real estate prices and an intelligent recommendation system for building an individual educational trajectory of a student. They compared laser and electro-beam welding of aluminum alloys and implemented traditional and modified friction welding with mixing of a specific alloy on different equipment. And finally, the participants worked together on project management using the building information model on the BIM 360 platform.

Professor Detlef HECK attested the past student marathon as one of the best examples of joint activities between the Russian and Austrian universities. “The participants actively interacted with each other, and showed excellent results. The range of disciplines in which they worked is very wide. This does impress.”

Students’ work was highly appreciated by their Russian and foreign curators. TU Graz professor Matthias MUELLER emphasized that the marathon was a unique chance for participants to leave the comfort zone, as well as learn how to work together remotely.

It was not easy to choose just one winner: all the submitted projects were worthy of an award. As a result of the discussion, the jury decided: there will be two winning teams! The lucky holders of scholarships from the International Polytechnic Summer School and summer school of one of the SPbPU partners were the groups of students who worked on the Intelligent Real Estate Assistant” and “Laser and Electron Beam Welding (LEBW)” projects. A special jury prize was awarded to the team that worked on the “Project Management Collaboration Using Building Information Modeling on the BIM 360 Platform,” which was particularly noted by the President of the St. Petersburg branch of PMI Maxim GRISHIN.

The technical director of AUTODESK Russia Petr MANIN highly appreciated the students' scientific activities and the results they obtained, and gave the project participants a valuable farewell to pay great attention not only to scientific and technical aspects, but also to presentation ones. “The more carefully you think over your presentation, the more chances you will have to be of interest to potential investors,” said the director of AUTODESK.

The students also made a point of the importance of participating in the project marathons: “During the project, we compared two types of welding: laser and electro-beam. To do this, we conducted experiments in Russia and in Austria. The student marathon impressed me a lot, and I sincerely advise students to take part in such projects. This is your chance to acquire important knowledge not only in your discipline, but also from related fields, as well as to receive a powerful impetus for self-development,” member of one of the winning teams Matthias MOSCHINGER shared his opinion.

Prepared by Center for International Recruitment and Communication. Text: Olga Dorofeeva