The Day of Pioneers (Den Pervykh), which included a series of lectures and master classes for scientists, students, and school pupils, was held at the SUSU University Entrepreneurial Boiling Point on the Day of Russian Science on February 8th. Dmitriy Kozlenkov, General Director of the Chelyabinsk IT Park, Sergey Kulik, Scientific Director of the MSU Quantum Technology Centre and Head of the SUSU Quantum Light Laboratory, and other experts participated in the festival.
The Day of Pioneers festival was also dedicated to opening the first branch of the Movement of Pioneers of the Russian Movement of Children and Youth. Master classes were organised for students and young scientists. Experienced scientists as well as experts in the field of business spoke on how to make a development profitable, what to pay attention to when filling out an application for the RSF contest, and shared their experience in patenting and commercializing of projects.
“Youth is the resource of further development. Our university is interested in providing training of highly qualified personnel. Students, postgraduates and young scientists are now being actively involved in the work on the projects. High competition over state-funded places in postgraduate programmes is an indicator of the need for young people to engage in science, an indicator of the motivation to continue their professional activities not in production, but in education and science,” gave the welcome speech the SUSU Acting Rector Alexander Wagner.
Anton Kozhemyako, a Level 4 TRIZ expert and managing partner of the TRIZ Business Association spoke on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), which allows to effectively solve a complex applied or organizational and managerial problem. The concept of TRIZ is defined as working on contradictions of a certain problem: identifying these contradictions, modelling and eliminating them, working with the obtained results. This technique allows to break a massive complex problem into several much simpler ones.
A master class by the Chief Research Fellow of the Department of Engineering Mechanics Sergey Sapozhnikov was devoted to discussing the key points for a proper filling out of an application for the contest of the Russian Science Foundation for the Support of Scientific Research. The expert reflected on what types of grants young specialists should start working with and reminded of the specifics and principles of competitive documentation.
“Filing a good application is an enormous work, which puts in order the thoughts in an academic advisor’s head, sets the rhythm of research with the help of the powerful SUSU infrastructure resources and creates a team – a future scientific school,” said Sergey Sapozhnikov.
Yuriy Koryukalov, Director of OOO Neurotechnology, came up with the secrets of successful commercialization:
“Working in this direction includes several blocks. It is necessary to develop a business model for scaling a product; think about how you organize your company abroad and how the production technology will be arranged; you need to constantly analyze the market in order to determine the niche in demand. In addition, it is important to test trial versions of the product in the market.”
The expert recommended future scientists to pay attention to the culture of product consumption in other countries and evaluate organisations that make it possible to enter the international market.
After the speakers gave their speeches, the awarding ceremony for young scientists for their active publication and scientific activities was held. Certificates were awarded to such postgraduates as Artem Malinin, Kadi Ammar, Mostafa Abotaleb, Aram Tsaturov, Olga Borodina, Marina Biryukova, Alina Episheva, Andrey Lisov, Andrey Starikov, and Daria Malykh.
The Day of Pioneers gave the Chelyabinsk school pupils an opportunity to attend educational and practical venues organized by SUSU. Future applicants visited a mobile ecological laboratory, prepared strawberry-flavoured molecular caviar, visited a Laboratory of Virtual Reality and learned about spy information technologies.
South Ural State University is a university of digital transformations, where innovative research is conducted in most of the priority fields of science and technology development. In accordance with the strategy of scientific and technological development of the Russian Federation, the university is focused on the development of big scientific interdisciplinary projects in the field of digital industry, materials science, and ecology. In 2021 SUSU became the winner in the competition under the Priority 2030 program. The university acts as a regional project office of the World-class Ural Interregional Research and Education Centre (UIREC), which is aimed at solving the tasks of the Science and Universities National Project.