Skoltech is an international graduate research-focused university that was founded by the group of world-renowned scientists in 2011. Skoltech's curriculum focuses on technology and innovation, offering Master's programs in 11 technological disciplines. Students receive rigorous theoretical and practical training, design their own research projects, participate in internships and gain entrepreneurial skills in English. The faculty is comprised of current researchers with international accreditation and achievements.

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Skoltech students won third place at the 2021 Junction Hackathon

Skoltech students and engineers distinguished themselves at the 2021 Junction hackathon, which took place from November 19 to 21, 2021. The team EMPHATYGUARD, comprised of engineers and current students of Skoltech, won third place for successfully designing and developing the technology that addresses very important sociological issues such as hate speech and toxicity in gamers’ chats. It only took them two days to build it from scratch.

junction_2021_team

The team EMPHATYGUARD consists of five members, including 2nd year Master student Alsu Vakhitova, research engineers of joint Skoltech-MTS laboratory Elena Volf and David Dale, and two 3rd year PhD students Irina Nikishina and Daryna Dementieva. They challenged themselves to carry out the “Uniting empathy and gaming” task presented by the Finnish company Supercell which develops video games and The Finnish Refugee Council and is Finland’s largest expert organization focusing on refugee and migration issues. During the event, the team created a demo of a modified dialogue chat in games that helps to decrease the amount of toxic and hate speech and help people to behave with more empathy to each other. Such chat incorporates detoxification technology of the messages that provide the neutralized versions of the text without rude words and insults (for example, “you did not do a sh*t for our win” will be transformed into a more polite phrase “you did not do anything for our win”). Test the demo of this Detoxifier here. 

The team was selected as the final winning team, after being thoroughly evaluated by both the peer participants of Junction 2021 and the SuperCell judges of the challenge, and thus awarded third place with the remark of the interesting solution about the connection of machine learning approaches and empathy. 

Junction is Europe’s leading hackathon, yearly gathering around 1500 hackers together for a weekend-long experience. It brought IT developers, designers, and other tech-minded people together to create new projects and solve intriguing challenges. This year’s hackathon has attracted over 150 teams.

Contact information:
Skoltech Communications
+7 (495) 280 14 81

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