II International Online IT-School has been successfully realized within the framework of the DIT4BEARs project at Northern Arctic Federal Universityin partnership with RUSSOFT Association.

During the week the participants followed an intensive course of lectures and workshops given by the leading IT experts and lecturers from China, Germany, USA and Russia. Among the key thematic areas covered by the IT-School programme were Artificial Intelligence, high-performance and distributed computing, machine learning. Special attention this year was paid to the topic of Big Data technology development and implementation and was thoroughly explored by the team of experts from Dalian Neusoft University of Informatics and NArFU during an international benchmarking seminar. The students dived into the history of the technology’s development in China and Russia, learned about the peculiarities of its usage in commerce, medicine, industry and education.

After an intensive week of theoretical classes and training students met in a Case-Battle on a final day of the programme to present their IT-solutions to the cases designed by experts from RUSSOFT Association, the team members of the CBC Kolarctic project “Disruptive information technologies for the Barents EuroArctic region”. Three teams were given 2 cases on Big data processing. The main task for the IT-School participants was to analyze heterogeneous data before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, compile two sets of data sources and present the results of the correlation between this data. Under the supervision of experts students managed not only to study and analyze huge amount of information in a limited period of time, generate high-quality and well-constructed solutions, but also to become a team. 

“The RUSSOFT Association is grateful for the opportunity to support such an important event for the future of the industry as the Online IT School DIT4BEARS. The “triple helix” format, or triple interaction, which includes a case competition, a hackathon and an internship, is a great opportunity for students to feel part of a large IT community. We are glad that RUSSOFT participating companies are ready to actively support such contests and participate in the training of young IT specialists,” comments Valentin Makarov, President of the Association.

“You’ve done a great work in these 5 days! All the three teams had structured presentations and we perceived all information provided, which is really good. It was not a bunch of numbers or pictures featured without any explanation. All teams came up with carefully considered and formed presentations. Keep on going this way and everyone will enjoy what you are doing. Hopefully, one day you will become another Steve Jobs,” said Innokenty Puntikov, First Line Software company representative.

The winners will be given an opportunity to undertake an internship at the Russoft Association in order to continue working on their projects.

This event is organized as part of the Kolarctic CBC DIT4BEARs project. The overall goal is to accelerate the introduction and transfer of Breakthrough Information Technologies to meet the social and economic needs of the Barents Euro-Arctic region.

More information is available on the DIT4BEARs project website.