Skoltech | Skoltech students have developed an artificial neural network that creates perfect pizza recipes for Dodo Pizza

Egor Baryshnikov, a 2^nd year Petroleum Engineering student, and Arseniy Golodyaev, a 2^nd year Materials Science student, met during a Deep Learning course at Skoltech. They decided to apply their skills during their summer break when they developed a new way to bake the ‘perfect pizza’ using Artificial Intelligence.

Conveniently, BBDO agency and Dodo Pizza chain were looking for such a model. Dodo Pizza was founded in 2011. Starting with just one small pizzeria in Syktyvar, Russia, the business opened 527 locations in 12 countries around the world, including the UK, USA and China.

Baryshnikov and Golodyaev built a neural network that analyzed three hundred thousand pizza recipes and scientific research on the molecular compatibility of ingredients to create ‘the perfect’ pizza.

Egor and Arseniy shared their behind-the-scenes experience as well:

“As always, everything happened spontaneously. We had just finished our spring Deep Learning course and were preparing to take a break before our summer internships, when we stumbled upon a request from BBDO agency to create a neural network for generating new recipes. New recipes for Dodo Pizza, to be more specific. We couldn’t pass this opportunity and got to work. At that moment, we didn’t understand whether this project would go any further than a summer experiment, we were just excited about the task; fast internet and some energy drinks got us further into the process. Looking back, we see how much work we should have done differently. We’re okay with that and see it as room for future growth and development.

Within a few weeks we had a working model that we could put into production. We were lucky that this project was experimental and not industrial or technical, which gave us more room for exploration. As soon as the neural network model generated new varieties of pizza, they were passed on to the chefs at Dodo. The tasting at Dodo R&D Lab was a turning point, because we realized the value of the project. It was very exciting to see a project brought to its finale – usually these kinds of things take a long time to develop and aren’t realized in reality. But with this project, we could not only see the results, but also taste them.”

We are excited to see where Egor and Arseniy take this project and wish them the best of luck in their ventures.