Regional festival Huawei Honor Cup 2020 took place at the International Campus of Polytechnic University

Last week, the regional festival of international competitions Huawei Honor Cup 2020 took place at Peter the Great Polytechnic University. Students, teachers and experts in the field of information and communication technologies from St. Petersburg universities and companies got together in the Resource Center of the SPbPU International Campus. The event was held in compliance with all security measures; simultaneously, it was broadcast on YouTube online, thanks to which all viewers could take part in interactive events and compete for the prizes.

Cooperation between SPbPU and the world's largest electronics manufacturer has been going on for several years and covers various areas: from student educational events to joint research in advanced scientific fields. Thus, with the active participation of the international services of the university, negotiations are regularly held between Huawei specialists and SPbPU scientists; which have resulted in a number of research and development activities commissioned by the company. This is not the first time that our university hosted the Huawei Honor Cup. In 2019, the regional competition festival was also held at the SPbPU site. Representatives of both parties spoke about the importance of such an alliance: in particular, Alexander ISAYEV, Deputy Director of the HR Department of Huawei in Russia, noted that SPbPU and Huawei are related by the polytechnic character of their activities:  disciplines and specialties intersect with each other, which opens up a lot of additional opportunities. University students can engage in a range of fields, from microelectronics to artificial intelligence. Graduates can try themselves in different types of activities, be it technical support or research and development in various segments, ranging from operator solutions to the Internet of Things and Big Data.

“These are not just technologies of the future: this is already coming,” Alexander ISAEV is sure. In 2020, the participants tried their hand at the following nominations: 5G (technologies and standards of mobile communication of the next generation), AI (models and methods of artificial intelligence), Cloud (technologies of storage and virtualization), Code (sports programming), IP (IP networks technologies and protocols), APP (mobile application development), ICT Observer, and HCIE (Best HCIE Expert). In addition to the competition tasks, all participants of the Huawei Honor Cup 2020 got access to a free online school with educational video lectures of Huawei experts in the most popular areas of ICT: mobile communication technologies, cloud solutions for servers and data storage, technologies and protocols of interaction in IP networks, artificial intelligence methods. At the Polytechnic University site, Huawei experts delivered lectures on the future of the integrated development environment (IDE) and text-to-speech (TTS) solutions in the modern industry, and held a Huawei ICT Academy presentation and HCNA trial testing.

There also was a quiz and a social media posting contest for all participants. Polytechnic University student Yegor FALAMEEV became the winner of the competition. “The festival is interesting and I really liked it. To participate in the quiz, I had to recollect everything we learned about networking in the second year, and it helped me to answer the questions correctly.” The winner, who took third place, studies at the St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation (SUAI). “I have been following the events within the Huawei Honor Cup for a long time, participated in them, and have gone through the points to the second stage of the competition. Having particpated in the quiz today and won the 3rd place, I’ve got to the second stage out of competition. Then I will have 2 weeks of training, passing the exam and tests. In fact, I already am a certified Huawei specialist and have participated in their summer school. Now I am preparing to pass a special exam and become a Huawei course teacher,” says Ivan STEPANENKO.

At the end of the festival, representatives of Huawei, the SPbPU International Office, and the Institute of Computer Science and Technology (ICST) took part in business negotiations with the Vice President of Huawei for Eurasia Mr. WU SAI. ICST Director Lev UTKIN emphasized that the university is interested in comprehensive cooperation with Huawei. “The basis for such cooperation can be joint work on complex long-term scientific problems, the solution of which will allow creating completely new technologies and products of the future,” explained Lev UTKIN. In his turn, the Vice President noted that the company consistently views Russia as a strategically important market and pays great attention to scientific research and innovation. In this context, Mr. WU SAI expressed confidence that partnership with such a large university as Polytechnic University will develop both within the framework of the existing areas and by launching new projects. At the end of the event, Mr. WU SAI personally congratulated the students - winners of the festival.