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.

Category Archives: Hackathons

Skoltech PhD students took the prize-winning place in the hackathon by Kaspersky Lab

18/04/2017

Evgeny Burnaev, Associate Professor, Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering

Team ADASE from Skoltech Center for Computational Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE) took the prize-winning place in a hackathon on data analysis devoted to industrial security held by Kaspersky Lab. The team was formed by Skoltech PhD students (N. Klyuchnikov, I. Nazarov and D. Smolyakov), who are the members of the same-name scientific group ADASE (Advanced Data Analytics in Science and Engineering) of prof. Evgeny Burnaev. The scientific group is specialized in the development of machine learning methods for industrial applications.

The hackathon of this type was conducted for the first time. During the on-site stage of the competition the participants were to deal with intrusions in the production process at the chemical plant by analyzing dataflow from controllers of Computer-Aided Process Control System obtained via Industrial DPI (Deep Package Inspection).

The data were in the form of multidimensional time series, which represented both stationary and transient processes. Because of that peculiarity, the detection of intrusions became quite sophisticated. In addition, there were loads of data to process (about 40 Gb), which brought technical complexity in the competition.

The participants had to apply machine-learning techniques in order to identify anomalies in the provided data, which can indicate intrusions, and build models for detecting attacks.

For participation in the on-site stage there were selected 30 teams out of more than a hundred ones from the qualifying stage. Each team consisted of 2-4 members.

Evgeny Burnaev: My colleagues and I, the members of the scientific group ADASE, are working on methods of Machine Learning and their applications for industrial analytics. This competition provided to us a particularly valuable opportunity to test the algorithms we have developed and to compare their accuracy with that of algorithms, developed by other participants.

Our result, the 3^rd place out of 30 selected teams for the on-site stage, is a good achievement, especially when among our competitors there were colleagues specialized in professional participation in machine learning competitions.

Nikita Klyuchnikov: Concerning applied significance of anomaly detection algorithms, they are essential not only for detecting intrusions, but also for solving problems of predictive maintenance.

The main goal of predictive maintenance is to detect unwanted changes (anomalies) and to predict failures in complex engineering systems (e.g. engines, gas turbines, etc.) using data collected from sensors.

Currently we are actively developing different methods for detecting anomalies and predicting rare events, we apply them for solving problems in various fields of science and engineering.

Original, well organized, challenging, with stunning results – SkinHack 1.0 at Skoltech

25/11/2016

On November 9-13, Skoltech hosted the SkinHack 1.0 Hackathon on computer vision. The Hackathon was organized by Youth Laboratories, a resident company of Skolkovo Innovation Center IT cluster, together with Skoltech Center of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, in partnership with Beiersdorf AG, Nvidia, Sberbank and iPharma. A team of Skoltech students won one of the two tracks of the Hackathon.

The Hackathon challenged algorithm developers and students from top universities in Moscow to work on recognizing and analyzing imperfections of the human skin. SkinHack is the first hackathon in AgeNet series, intended to develop comprehensive biomarkers of aging. SkinHack Hackathon was opened by President of Skoltech, Prof. Alexander Kuleshov, himself a specialist in the field of information technologies and mathematical modeling.

During the first day of Skinhack, the participants attended lectures on computer vision, machine learning and deep learning given by top professionals from Sberbank (Natalia Romenskaya), Vision Labs (Sergey Milyaev), Insilico Medicine (Alex Zhavorokov, Ivan Ozerov), Youth Laboratories (Konstantin Kiselev), NVIDIA (Dmitriy Konyagin), Beiersdorf AG (Sven Clemann). In addition, the two tasks for the Hackathon were announced – accurate age prediction from facial structure and wrinkles tracking, well-known signs of aging, and criteria to assess one’s physical shape.

SkinHack is the first hackathon organized at Skoltech this year and has already set a very high benchmark in originality, level of organization and support, caliber of the challenge, quality of lecturers and mentors and level of engagement of academic and industrial communities. SkinHack presented a new approach to organizing the hackathon: the online 24-hours support was provided by the hackathon’s tutors – specialists in machine learning and deep learning from Skoltech, Youth Laboratories, Vision Labs, MSU, Insilico Medicine and MPTI. Every team could consult any tutor, unlike most hackathons where one tutor is assigned to a particular team.

79 participants from Skoltech, Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, and National Research Nuclear University divided into 14 teams. SkinHack technical infrastructure allowed every team to perform their calculation and test models on their own Amazon AWS p2.xlarge with Tesla K80 machines, a very advanced computation capacity for an event such as hackathon.

The unique dataset for the hackathon was provided by Beiersdorf AG (Nivea) and consisted of high quality standardized images linked to age. The prizes of Skinhack included prize fund of 300K roubles, Tesla K40 machine, small prizes from sponsors and a salaried internship at the data science department of Beiersdorf AG (Nivea, Hamburg).

SkinHack participants demonstrated advanced programming skills. They managed to build an algorithm for age prediction of RMSE 2.42 and accurate algorithm for wrinkles tracking. Teams with the best algorithm performance were awarded money prizes, and the team with the most original approach received a Tesla K40 machine. Next week Beiersdorf AG will announce the winner for internship.

“SkinHack showed great interest in the challenge of detecting signs of aging using computer vision from both big companies and researchers. When we were organizing Skinhack, we did not expect that great interest. The stunning results they obtained in just 2 days are amazing and we now have aspiration to organize more hackathons among talented Russian students”, said Alexey Shevtsov, CEO of Youth Laboratories.

The participants expressed their deep appreciation to the high level of organization, very interesting challenge, supportive staff, excellent mentors and lecturers and they intend to participate in future Hackathons from AgeNet series.

“This Hackathon was a very interesting experience for us. We are excited to see how engaged and concentrated the students worked on the topic”, said Sven Clemann, head of applied biophysics department, Beiersdorf (Nivea).

The winning team in facial micro features tracking task is “Random Noise”, participants Olga Koval (Skoltech), Vladimir Glazachev (Skoltech), Alexey Martianov (MIPT), Shahrukh Athar (Skoltech), and Ksenia Karpova (Skoltech).

The winning team in the age prediction task is “ML SWAT”, participants Arthur Kuzin (MIPT) and Dmitriy Kozlov (MSU Lomonosov).

The T-shirt that will let you feel the field got first prize for Skoltech students

24/11/2016

by Ido Nativ

June 14, 2018, the opening match of the 2018 Football world cup. You sit at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, wearing a t-shirt with the Russian flag on it, and you loudly support your national team. 20 minutes into the game and it’s a goal for Russia! You can feel the excitement in your heart, but also in your body. Your shirt is vibrating and the Russian flag on it is replaced with the word “GOAL!” in flashing colors. Does this sound like a dream to you? In less than two years, this may be a reality that will change the way sports fans show their support.

Skoltech students won the first prize in a fashion hackathon that was held last month. The students, Pavel Sukhov, Oleg Shipitko, and Marko Simic, all from Skoltech’s Robotics lab, featured a very unique t-shirt for sports fans.

Pavel Sukhov presenting the “Feel the Field” prototype.

Their project, named “Feel the Field” uses wearable tech to take the football spectator experience to a whole different level. Their t-shirts have an embedded LED display, which is connected to ios/android application, through which, the user can choose what image to display – his team’s logo, mascot, a written message etc. “Feel the Field” also enables multi-user collaborations. Fans wearing these shirts can create an interactive display that is shown on them.

“Refuge” team with their 1st place certificates at the Fashion Hackathon.

The Fashion Hackathon consisted of two tracks: Fashion Wearable and E-commerce. Skoltech’s team “Refuge” got the first prize in the Fashion Wearable track, as well as one more nomination called Promising Market.

The success in the fashion hackathon was the icing on the cake for our students. Just a little bit before that, team Refuge gave there a more serious pitch-session in front of leaders of industry at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. In this event they also got one of the two winning nominations.

“While it is impossible to estimate the technological level and the prospects of commands, since the teams had too little time, there was an exception: team Refuge. They did a very good and cool work in just two weeks! Their idea is good and they have an understanding of who they sell to. The fact that in such a short time they managed to produce a prototype worth showing, is an indicator for a good team.” Complimented Alexander Gorny, the CIO of Mail.ru, who was one of the experts participating in the event.

Team “Refuge” at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

Professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou, head of Skoltech’s Robotics Lab, commented about his students’ achievement: “The “Feel the Field” project is just fascinating and impressing. Not only that I like the idea, but I really want to wear it. Conceptually, I see two catchy features that people will enjoy: The first one is that the group of hundreds of standing fans, let us call it pixel, can produce huge crowd image of e.g. flag of the team, face of the player, animated text. Deep psychological connections between the members of the fan club can be built using the device. The second one is the touch feedback that fully immerse the spectacular to the play and gives emotionally charged connection with the game. With the touch sensation on the chest user can experience the ball motion on the field, goal event, and human wave direction. This is the part of the Affective Haptics technology that was proposed by me in 2009. It aims to control and send the emotions to the humans through the tactile channel. In the case of “Feel the Field”, the user can experience the charged emotions of the game!”

Hacking the way to Skoltech

13/02/2016

by Ido Nativ

the panel of the judges and the crowd.

Oleg is at the red square and he needs to get to Skoltech. At the same time, Daria needs to get from the Bolshoi theatre (which is not far from the red square) to the Skolkovo golf club (which is pretty close to Skoltech). The question is what is the most efficient and economical way to take Oleg and Daria in one car? This challenge was presented to a crowd of 48 IT students from top universities in the Moscow region, in the Skoltech Hack race that was held today.

But this was only on the second stage of the day. At first, these students came organized in 13 teams. A week ago, these teams received a different technical-algorithmic problem, which they had to solve. Today, at the first stage, each team had 3 minutes to present its solution to the problem in front of a panel of Skoltech judges: Bram Caplan – Director for Student Affairs, Anna Nikolaeva – Manager for Student Outreach, Alessandro Golkar – Assistant Professor at the Space center, and Dmitry Vetrov – Assistant Professor at the Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering.

The judges move to the “aquarium” to decide which team won the first stage.

Trying to solve the second challenge.

The first prize of this stage went to the “MIPT hackathon gang”, a team of four young guys, who could easily be confused with a brit-pop band. The second prize went to their fellow MIPTians “AlphaTeam”. The third prize went to a mixed group of students from MEPI, HSE and MSU, named “Han shoot first”. Each of these three winning teams will win a dinner with one of Skoltech leaders.

After a lunch break, the teams gather in a different room to meet their next challenge, presented above. They are seated in pairs, deliberately reshuffled so no one sits with his/her team-mate. Boris Urman, Skoltech graduate and co-founder of Sharxi, delivers them the details of their challenge. They all have two hacking-hours to come up with the best result. The winners of this stage will also get a prize, a different one: a fast track to Skoltech’s selection weekend.

Anna Nikolaeva explains that the purpose of this Hack race is to attract students to Skoltech’s selection process before the deadline of February 22^nd. “We try to evaluate their solutions, the scientific part of it, but we also evaluate their presentation”, she says, “We are looking for talented students who can become part of our start-up university”. If you think that you are talented enough to study in Skoltech, be sure to visit our application page, and apply before the 22^nd.

1st place on the first stage: MIPT hackathon gang

2nd place on the first stage: AlphaTeam

3rd place on the first stage: Han shoot first

DeepHack at Skoltech

10/02/2016

On February 6 Skoltech hosted DemoDay of the DeepHack Q & A hackathon. The event was aimed at summarizing the results of the DeepHack Q & A hackathon, as well as the outcomes of the joint contest, organized by the Skolkovo Foundation and MIPT.

DeepHack Q & A, which is the International hackathon on deeper learning and machine intellect, took place on January 31- February 5 at MIPT. The participants tried their hand at solving the fundamental scientific problem – finding intellectual answers to questions about the world around.

Alexei Sitnikov, Skoltech’s Vice-President for Institutional and Resource Development.

Skoltech prof. Victor Lempitsky.

Evgeny Kuznetsov, Deputy General Director – Program Director, Member of the Board of OJSC “RVC”.

On February 6, the final day of the Hackathon, the event started with a presentation by Alexei Sitnikov, Skoltech’s Vice-President for Institutional and Resource Development, who welcomed the experts and participants in the institute, and then told the audience about Skoltech. “We make smart folks rich! We not only teach, but also explain how this knowledge should be used in practice”, said Sitnikov, “Any class you choose concludes with a practical application, making a prototype, a project, something that you can touch, see, and evaluate its effectiveness. This is one of the elements of the innovative approach to education at Skoltech. ”

The program of the final day of the Hackathon featured an abundance of scientific lectures and presentations. For example, in the morning Skoltech prof. Victor Lempitsky delivered a scientific and educational lecture. Lempitsky spoke about the Computer Vision group projects, which he has been leading at Skoltech, and appealed to all the hackathon participants interested in research and work in this area, to apply to Skoltech. Among the speakers in the second half of the day was especially memorable Evgeny Kuznetsov, Deputy General Director – Program Director, Member of the Board of OJSC “RVC”, who delivered a talk on how neuroscience will change the world and how one can participate in this. He also emphasized that the “start-up-related activities in Russia today are better developed than anywhere else in the world. It’s a nice overview of the number of start-ups, foundations and investments. However, whether it is necessary to change the higher education system radically, or rather increase the number of institutes to maintain this level, it’s already a rhetorical question”.

The main objective of the hackathon was to gather talented students, PhD students, young scientists and IT industry professionals for brainstorming over one of the most complex issuing – intellectual answer to questions using the classical methods of working with natural language and algorithms for deep learning. The results of research obtained in recent years have shown that the neural algorithms of deep learning significantly exceed the classical methods of working with natural language in tasks such as speech recognition, machine translation, definition of tones in sentences and parts of speech. But in the field of dialogue and question & answer systems, many problems still remain unsolved.

Mikhail Burtsev, PhD, organizer of the scientific school of the hackathon.

“We realized that those fundamental tasks that our team can solve, as practice shows, can be quickly implemented in the form of business products. And Skolkovo is just a place that allows you to establish an interface between scientific research and the final product”, Mikhail Burtsev, PhD, organizer of the scientific school of the hackathon shared the details of organizing this event, “In this regard, we came together and decided to make the hackathon in two parts. The first part consists of a research program, and the second one, the final day, is practical, when folks can present their projects and receive evaluation and support of Skolkovo”.
“However, the projects presented today”, added Burtsev, “won’t be related to the task that the team has been working on through the week. These projects have been created separately, but with the use of the deep learning technology.”

50 people were selected to participate in the hackathon, as they split into 12 teams. Their main task was to surpass the best world achievements in the question-answer systems to address The Allen AI Science Challenge – a topical scientific issue, published by the Microsoft’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence co-founder Paul Allen, on Kaggle (international competitive platform for machine learning). To this end, the participants developed an algorithm to produce software that can learn on its own to answer the questions of the level of the 8th grade of American schools. Within the hackathon’s scientific school, the world’s leading experts from Google Deepmind, Facebook AI Research, openAI, Skoltech and other research institutes delivered lectures on deep learning and its application to issues in natural language processing. As a result, all 12 teams that participated in hackathon, made it to top 50 out of the 700 teams, registered at Kaggle.

Rob Fergus, lead researcher at Facebook AI Research.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in Hackathon and to be here today”, Rob Fergus, lead researcher at Facebook AI Research welcomed everyone, “It was very interesting to work with teams, folks asked good questions and offered exceptional solutions to set tasks. We look forward to seeing these people on a summer internship at Facebook AI Research”.

Unique prizes were prepared for the winning teams – a tour to the international NVIDIA GTC 2016 science & tech conference, an opportunity to get a mini-grant from the Skolkovo Foundation for the team, who would offer the most interesting business idea on the basis of scientific developments, a possibility of passing a summer internship at Facebook AI Research and more.

Albert Efimov, Head of the Skolkovo Robotics Center.

“Deep learning of neural networks is the most important direction of development of artificial intelligence technologies, which robotics needs so much. Therefore, it is very important for us to identify all the people who deal with this topic. We will offer them new, interesting challenges, solving specific application problems”, said Albert Efimov, Head of the Skolkovo Robotics Center, “As a special prize from Skolkovo, we decided to give the winning team a chance to receive a 5 million rubbles grant. This will allow the team to focus on the development of the project. Recognition by the expert community is an important step on the path to success. ”

The event was the second in a series of neural network hackathons, held by DeepHackLab and fundamentally differed from standard hackathons in its scientific orientation and the presence of the scientific school, and the final day boasted an unforgettable atmosphere. The general partners of the DeepHack Q & A Hackathon were Skolkovo Foundation, Skolkovo Robotics Center, Rostelecom, Segmento, NVIDIA, RVC, YADRO, LiveTech. Support also came from Vikium, Promobot, NVR, AnyWalker, Deloitte, Dataliticsolutions and the Moscow Institute of Technology.

Olga Uskov, President of Cognitive Technologies group.

“I’ve visited similar events around the world – from California to Singapore – and would like to say that the level of the event, which organizers have demonstrated today, is definitely not lower than at other hackathons, and the emotional intensity of guys is even higher. The task of Skolkovo, in my opinion, is primarily to create an environment that will cultivate professionals. Such an environment, or even call it ‘soil’, has already emerged”, Olga Uskov, President of Cognitive Technologies group of companies, shared her impressions, “With regard to the projects themselves, we liked one especially, we will not say its name, but we have already suggested that the project drivers collaborate with us.”

Hackathon winners, who took the first place, was the team called Generation Gap. They got the opportunity to go to the international NVIDIA GTC 2016 science & tech conference and the right to be auditioned for the summer internship at Facebook AI Research. The runner-up was the 5vision team. A special Skolkovo Foundation prize has been granted to the “Ashmanov’s Neural Networks” team for their http://puzzle.ru project.

Stanislav Ashmanov, one of the creators of “Ashmanov’s Neural Networks”: “We are making a program that can conceive what is depicted in the photos and videos. Moreover, it can describe it in a language understandable by humans. With the help of this program, it’s possible to automatize the video surveillance or social networking tasks. For example, by those images that a person posted to his or her profile on social networks, one can see what he or she loves, where he or she goes, what he or she wears, if he or she has a pet, etc. This information is useful for increasing the advertising conversion due to a better understanding of the client. Our software is based on the deep learning technology, neural networks that can rapidly process the image”.

The winners of Skolkovo Foundation prize with Albert Efimov

Stanislav Ashmanov, one of the creators of “Ashmanov’s Neural Networks”

Team “Generation Gap”

Team “5vision”

Photos by Anna Shimanskaya

Contributors: Albert Efimov, Olga Avryasova, Denis Borodkin

Hackathon: Girls vs. Boys

When: 06-12-2014 10:00

An engineering hackathon titled “Girls vs. Boys” will be held by Skoltech students on December 6, 2014

If you’re an engineering student (girl or boy) here is one event you do not want to miss:

Girls vs. Boys Hackathon.

The competition, scheduled for December 6, will focus on engineering (not coding) challenges. The tasks will test participants’ engineering creativity and problem solving skills within a limited time frame.

And here is the twist, devised by the organizers, who are all Skoltech students: teams made of three female participants will face off teams consisting of three male contestants. Hence, girls vs. boys.

Current and prospective students are welcome to join the hackfest. Organizers will be happy to help assemble teams for those who have none. Deadline for registration is November 10. For more info and registration:

http://bit.ly/1x4v8Rc
http://bit.ly/1pmqfRf

And may the best persons win.

* The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is a private graduate research university in Skolkovo, Russia, a suburb of Moscow. Established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT, Skoltech educates global leaders in innovation, advances scientific knowledge, and fosters new technologies to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. Applying international research and educational models, the university integrates the best Russian scientific traditions with twenty-first century entrepreneurship and innovation.

Completion of the 48-hour Skoltech Hackathon 3.0

04/02/2014

Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology announces the completion of the 48-hour Skoltech Hackathon 3.0, held on January 31 – February 2, 2014 at the “Knoket” Center for Youth Innovation Creativity (CYIC) at the address 25 Bolotnikovskaya Street.

The Skoltech Hackathon 3.0, which was held in Moscow this weekend, is a student initiative, based on international and Russian experience of participation and victory of Skoltech students in the Hackathon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the U.S.A., as well as in the Hackathon 2.0, held in Russia in December 2013.

Skoltech Hackathon was the third such event, and this time it was devoted to electronics. It was held under the auspices of Emecs-thon, the international Hackathon on embedded systems, which this year was held simultaneously, in real time, in six countries: Germany, England, Norway, Romania, Palestine, and of course, in Russia.

Representatives of three universities took part in Skoltech Hackathon 3.0: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and M.E. Bauman Moscow State Technical University. Eight teams were formed, but only five teams reached the final presentation to members of the Russian and international jury. “The work on the development of an embedded computer system from the scratch turned out to be too tense and difficult”, says one of the participants of the Hackaton. The teams worked on their projects for 48 hours. During this time, the participants of the Hackaton created magnificent designs and prototypes that were submitted to a competent jury.

“The idea of each project originated from a specific problem. That is why the success rate of each of them is so high,” says Tigran Shakhverdyan, co-founder and executive director of the startup RoboCV, engaged in the creation of intelligent autopilots for transport.

The creative approach in the production of prototypes greatly distinguished the participants of Russian Hackaton from students of other countries. Many prototypes were made of improvised materials, which students could find everywhere. Thus, one could see parts from an old printer, a sponge or even a simple rubber band, skillfully implemented in the project, in the models of the prototypes. However, the students used not only improvised materials in the production of prototypes. The equipment of the “Local Lab” of Skoltech Hackathon 3.0 consisted of soldering stations, milling machines, a laser cutting machine, etc. The competition was strict and fair, and that is why it was forbidden to use 3D printers – not all of the participating countries had necessary counterparts.

The projects have found their applications in various fields of human activity. Two teams took seriously the eternal problem of the majority of people – an incorrect posture – and offered their solutions to this problem. Thus, the first group of students made special braces, which give an opportunity to control and adjust the posture of a person. The team assessed various medical characteristics and concluded that one of the most important indicators was the curvature of the back. A miniature elastic tension sensor was mounted in the braces, which allowed seeing and assessing the degree of the spinal curvature at each time point. The second team also worked on a similar problem and developed a draft of a smart chair: the system reads the data on a seated man in a special way, collects and analyzes the data and, consequently, allows controlling one’s posture during the day. Other students also thought about life in the office and developed a prototype that allows performing real-time control over the flow and temperature of water in the cooler. This simple solution can also be applied in various other hydraulic systems, where it is necessary to quickly calculate and predict the flow of water. Another group of students attended to the cooking process. This team developed a prototype of a device that can be attached to any kitchen appliance, which allows determining the temperature of the food being cooked, the degree of preparedness, and other characteristics. It is important to note that all the data are collected on a single medium and, if the dishes are cooked successfully, you can use them as the initial data for a new recipe. The last project was the prototype of an automatic alarm system. The device is equipped with a special face recognition camera, which responds to human movement and displays the image on the computer screen. The use of this prototype is quite varied, depending on the purpose and use of specific materials. The team told about the way it could be used, for example, on your household plot, and offered an option for the implementation of this prototype in case the Ministry of Defense was interested in it.

It proved very hard to select the finalists of the local Skoltech Hackathon 3.0, all the projects were worthy of victory. After long discussions, it was decided not to distinguish just one team, and therefore special nominations were awarded and different teams received them. The team with the prototype of an automatic protection system won the nomination of the “Best Technology Idea”. The nomination of the “Best Business Idea” was won by the team that had developed special braces allowing for adjusting one’s posture. A special nomination was awarded to the team that had developed a system for the control of water flow. In addition, the prototype of a smart chair, which also allowed improving one’s posture, won the Audience Choice Award, who appreciated the creative approach and the results of the team’s work.

“I was greatly impressed by the projects presented at the Skoltech Hackathon today. The teams created excellent prototypes from scratch in just 48 hours, and then proved their suitability. The members of the jury expressed their ideas on the application or improvement of the prototypes, but I can confidently say that these were all great results,” said Alessandro Golkar, professor of Skoltech, specializing in the development of tools and methodologies for the architecture of large engineering systems.

After several hours of intense discussions, exchange of impressions and information with other countries participating in the Hackaton, the global finalist was determined. In a difficult struggle, the team from Norway won the title of “EMECS-thon GURU”, coming just a little ahead of the Russian team with its “Posture Guard” project, involving the development of braces, which allow controlling and correcting one’s posture. The prototype of the project was developed by three students of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology: Rustam Akhtyamov, Oleg Urzhumtsev, and Urman Boris.

Skoltech Hackathon 3.0 ended on Sunday evening, February 2, with the awarding ceremony of winners in Russia, and awarding of the international winner. After the official part, the Hackathon was continued by a discussion of each of the projects in private conversations: the jury and experts of the Hackaton gave their professional advice to the team members, assessed their market potential and discussed the implementation of new ideas of the tireless Hackaton participants.

Reference information:

EMECS-thon is an annual marathon competition in the field of embedded systems; it is open to students of universities of the EMECS consortium, and partner universities. The event is organized annually and is held simultaneously in all the universities of the EMECS consortium, and in the partner universities.

The completion of the Skoltech Hackathon 2.0

03/12/2013

The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology announces the completion of the Skoltech Hackathon 2.0 which took place on 30 November – 1 December 2013 at Digital October, API Moscow located at the address: 2/1 Bersenevsky side street, Moscow.

The Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn 2.0 was held at the initiative of Skoltech students, who were the main organisers of the event. They used the experience that they had gained at the international hackathons in the USA, where in 2012 they became winners in a similar competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The theme of the Skoltech Hackathon this time was education: its Russian specificity, the existing topical problems, as well as the possible ways of addressing them.

More than 100 people took part in the Hackathon, including Russian and foreign students, the staff of such companies as Parallels, Mail.ru, Mosenergo and some others, as well as young scientists and IT startup founders.

There were 23 teams which worked 24 hours in a row without a break, which was one of the conditions of the competition. During that time, the participants created a wide variety of projects and their prototypes which were then submitted to a competent jury for assessment.

“The ideas of the participants were consistent with the problems existing in the market. I, for example, would single out such a topical problem as big data – these days, searching for relevant information for the solution of a specific task among all that mass of information available to us is a big problem for many. If the guys continue working in this direction, they have a lot of potential,” said Andrei Ivanov, COO of JetBrains.

There were 3 winning places as well as prizes in 3 nominations: Tools in the Sphere of Education, Best Social Project, and Open Information of the Educational Process. The winners of the Skoltech Hackathon 2.0 were DreamTeam with the project SkThread designed to help students and schoolchildren decide on their future profession. Second place was awarded to the KiсkAss team, and E-team were third. Skoltech students were actively involved in the development of the projects – there were students from Skoltech among the members of two of the six finalist teams, including the winning project SkThread.
The experts and mentors of the competition were specialists in various fields, among them: Dmitry Peskov, Director for Young Professionals (ASI Directorate); Martin Gitsels, Director General of the Siemens Research Centre; Svetlana Infimovskaya, Deputy Executive Director of the Association of Innovative Regions of Russia (AIRR); Andrei Ivanov, COO of JetBrаins; Dmitry Burkovsky, Vice President of Xsоllа; and Andrei Barkin, Director for Strategic and International Programmes, SKOLKOVO business school.

“I am very pleased with the projects which were presented at the Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn today. Many of them were very promising and well developed as well, considering such a short period of time that they had. I believe in the market potential of some of them,” said Martin Gitsels, Director General of the Siemens Research Centre.
The event was sponsored by JetBrаins, Siemens, SmartStep and the Moscow Innovation Development Centre. Its information partners were SmartStep, Sports.ru, Runa Capital, the Yopolis project, Changellence and others.
The Skоlteсh Hасkаthоn 2.0 culminated with the awards ceremony for the winners and participants, as well as the discussions of each project during personal conversations: the mentors and experts gave team members their professional opinions and advice, evaluated the market potential of their projects and discussed the implementation of the new ideas of the tireless Hackathon participants.

Information for reference:
Hackathon is a two-day competition during which students and specialists in the field of information technology (programmers, designers and managers) set up teams and work together on the solution to some problem. Their goal is to create a prototype of a solution within 24 hours from scratch and to submit it to the jury for assessment. The work of the Hackathon can result in the creation of real products which could be realised in the market in the nearest future.