The International Student Project Marathon to Take Start Despite the Pandemic

The SPbPU International Office and institutes PU continue to work on the preparation of the International Student Project Marathon. Despite the pandemic, new participants from all over the world are joining the event. To date, the main partner universities and areas in which groups of students will conduct research have already been identified.

Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) remains a permanent participant in the International Student Project Marathon. On the part of the Austrians, the curators are professors Wolfgang SLANY and Nikolai SCHERBAKOV, the curator on the part of Polytechnic University is Associate Professor of the Institute of Computer Science and Technology Vadim PAK. The participants have identified a pool of topics on which the research is planned. For example, students will work on problems of recognition and generation of speech, texts, and emotional images; create a control system for drones for the delivery of goods, and even deal with a serious topic of the recognition and prediction of cancer using deep learning technology.

“Last December, after completion of the Student Project Marathon-2019,  at TU Graz, a meeting with all the professors who coordinated the student projects was organized. We harvested highly positive feedback. Our young computer scientists are especially interested in continuing the project. They keep in touch with the professors of SPbPU and actively discuss topics for new projects,” said Barbara BÖTTGER, coordinator of strategic partnership at TU Graz.

The strategic partner of SPbPU, i.e., the Technical University of Madrid (UMP, Spain), has become a new participant in the International Student Project Marathon. Professor of the Mechanical Engineering Department, Director of Composites and Nanocomposites Lab Juan Manuel MUNOZ-GUIJOSA coordinates the project on the Spanish side; Ekaterina VASILIEVA, Associate Professor of the Higher School of Physics, Materials and Technology (SPbPU Institute of Metallurgy, Mechanical Engineering and Transport) Ekaterina VASILIEVA represents Polytechnic University. Two projects are planned for this collaboration. Both of them are aimed at developing constitution of composite materials with increased damping (i.e., vibration damping) and strength properties.

Another SPbPU partner from Spain that will take part in the marathon is the University of Cadiz. Groups of Russian and Spanish students will conduct research related to technique and error analysis in Russian-Spanish and Spanish-Russian translation. A project aimed at the formation of communicative competence in the online environment of teaching Russian as a foreign language is also on the agenda.

The start of the international project student marathon is expected in the fall. Negotiations are underway with another potential participant - Federal University of Technology – Paraná (Brazil), with which Polytechnic University has been cooperating over the past two years. An active discussion is also going on with another strategic partner of SPbPU, i.e., City, the University of London (Great Britain), which has expressed great interest in participating in the project. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, scientific groups will work remotely in compliance with all safety measures. As the curators note, the high quality and depth of the research will not be affected by this.

Prepared by the SPbPU International Office