The 12th Innovation Workshop for first-year master’s students has concluded at Skoltech. Over the course of a month, new students from all centers and programs immersed themselves in the technological project development cycle. Under the guidance of mentors, the students worked in teams, created prototypes of their solutions, received feedback from experts, and finally presented their projects at the final defenses.

Every academic year at Skoltech begins with a unique course for new students, regardless of their program or center — the Innovation Workshop. It is a platform for learning the basic principles of the technology business and implementing innovative ideas in a real-world environment. The course instructors include not only Skoltech professors but also invited mentors — industrial and academic experts. The students themselves propose ideas for their projects and go through the entire creation cycle.

“The Innovation Workshop this year was bright and successful — and this has been happening at Skoltech for many years. We see groups of students creating projects within a month and gaining not only educational experience but also energy and inspiration from it. The essence of the Innovation Workshop is to bring the student to the point of demonstrating a prototype to a real consumer. And at that moment, magic happens: A student, often without money or business experience, sees an expert get excited about their idea and start talking to them as an equal,” shared Dmitry Kulish, Professor of the Practice at the Skoltech Entrepreneurship Center, the lead instructor of the Innovation Workshop, and the director of the joint Skoltech-MIPT master’s program “Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovative Business Development.”

The closing ceremony of the 12th “Innovation Workshop” at Skoltech took place on September 26. The expert jury determined six winning projects across all student cohorts:

• Naviguide — a portable navigation device: assistance for people with visual impairments. The team proposed a prototype of a new solution: The user wears a special device on their head that helps detect and avoid obstacles using vibrational signals and a special artificial intelligence model.

• BituTest — portable sensors resistant to dark petroleum products. The project presents a portable sensor designed to operate in the harsh conditions typical for dark petroleum products. The main end users are specialist operators from oil refining and transportation companies who require on-site operational measurements. The solution prevents bitumen adhesion through ultrasonic vibrations and anti-adhesion surfaces.

• CatchMatch — an AI-based service for creating resumes and responding to job vacancies. The AI assistant automatically generates tailored resumes based on the user’s profile and job vacancy links, and also manages responses and interviews through a unified dashboard with smart reminders. Currently, there is no integrated platform on the market for end-to-end management of the job search process using artificial intelligence.

• Bladeless Wind Turbines. The solution is based on the phenomenon of vortex-induced vibration: Oscillations of a tube under the influence of wind vortices are converted into electricity using electromagnetic induction. Existing bladed turbines require constant strong winds, cannot be recycled, create noise pollution, and harm nature, while the use of complex gearboxes and massive structures increases maintenance costs and worsens the landscape's appearance. The prototype is a cylindrical tube that oscillates silently. Inside the tube, magnets oscillate within a coil, generating electricity.

• Automated Pipeline Inspection System. The development eliminates the need for daily diagnostics of oil well sucker rods, which takes 4-8 hours and costs $15-40 thousand per day due to well downtime. The proposed wellhead equipment automatically scans the pipes from the outside as they are extracted during standard workover operations and promptly generates diagnostic reports indicating the location and severity of defects.

• EMG Prostheses. The project addresses the problem of limited functionality of bionic prostheses for people with upper limb amputations. This problem lies in the limited set of user-friendly prosthetic gestures. The usage scenario is as follows: The user intends to make a gesture, which causes muscle contractions in their residual limb. A bracelet worn on the forearm reads these EMG signals. A trained neural network deciphers the specific patterns of muscle activity and sends a command to the robotic hand to perform the desired gesture (typing, grasping, etc.). The solution uses machine learning to decode the EMG signals.

“Among this year’s winners, there are many remarkable stories. For example, the creators of BituTest were initially convinced that their project was of little interest to anyone and would remain a purely academic work. Imagine their amazement when live interest in the development was shown by potential clients from construction companies and government structures. Of course, there were projects related to artificial intelligence. The main thing about them is that students, who have learned to speak eloquently about AI being the future, finally find a specific, niche application for a specific device. At that moment, AI ceases to be an abstraction and becomes a real, living technology of our time. This is precisely one of the most valuable aspects of our Innovation Workshop,” summarized Dmitry Kulish.

Skoltech has created conditions to support student initiatives in the field of technological entrepreneurship. The teams will be able to develop their own projects, receive expert support, and also participate in grant competitions and accelerators from the Institute and its partners.