About the forum
The main goal of the forum and the conference is to promote science among the youth, as well as provide a platform for communication between researchers and international collaboration in various fields of science. Among the events’ official partners are the Sirius Park of Science and Art, and the Inconsalt K company.
This year, the Sirius Park opened its doors to over 600 Master’s and PhD students and young researchers from both Russia and other countries, including some 70 leading Russian and international scientists. Among the invited lecturers were heads of the laboratories established under the megagrant (large research grants awarded by the Ministry of Education and Science) program, who shared about the results of their research projects.
In general, the discussions at the forum revolved around the seven priority areas of the Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation, namely Security, Ecology and Energetics, Digital Technologies, Transport Systems, Medicine and Pharmacology, Agriculture and Food Industry, and Humanities. As noted by Mikhail Kotyukov, the Minister for Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, the pursuance of these priority areas is aimed at overcoming the key challenges faced by humanity.
Science: meeting with the President, new connections and the international agenda
Among the highlights of the forum was a meeting between the President of Russia Vladimir Putin and young scientists and megagrant recipients, which took place on May 17. The meeting was attended by many internationally recognized scientists, including Valery Fokin, the 2013 Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry, and Ekaterina Skorb, a former Harvard professor now working at ITMO University and the winner of last year’s L’OREAL – UNESCO “For Women in Science” contest. Prof. Skorb spoke with the President about her scientific background, her decision to work in Russia and her current work at ITMO University.
Apart from that, the forum also featured an extensive international program and gave its participants a chance to establish useful connections with the university’s French and German colleagues in a more informal setting. According to Valentin Miliсhko, a senior research associate at ITMO’s Faculty of Physics and Engineering, the topics discussed include a range of new programs aimed at supporting young researchers, which may be extremely beneficial for their future work.
International research conference Science of the Future: the best project in the category “Transport Systems”
On May 17, the team comprised of Alexey Kashevnik, an associate professor at ITMO’s Information Technologies and Programming Faculty, Andrey Chechulin, Vasily Desnitsky and Elena Doynikova, who represented St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as Alexey Ivanyuk (Volgograd State University) and Vladislav Zvalinsky (Maikop State Technological University), took first place at the 3rd International Conference Science of the Future in the Transport Systems category.
Alexey Kashevnik shares that he first participated in the section’s panel session, where he presented his research on an intelligent system for the monitoring of driver’s performance. The section’s work also implied collaboration between young scientists from different organizations. The participants were first asked to talk about themselves and then they could form teams based on their interests.
“After all the participants were split into teams, we were offered to think about the project that all the team members would be interested to work on. My team was made up of specialists in socio-cyberphysical systems, robotics, and information security. That’s why we decided to develop a hardware and software system designed for working under emergency conditions, which is now being developed at ITMO’s international research laboratory “Intelligent Technologies for Socio-Cyberphysical Systems,” comments Alexey Kashevnik.
The authors of the project propose using a modular robotic system (MRS) with retractable chassis and wheels of variable diameter. The concept of the Internet of Transport Things will be used to accumulate the context the robotic system is located in. Apart from that, the project’s authors plan to equip their robot with a quadcopter, which will allow them to scan the terrain and maneuver around obstacles. In case it finds the latter impossible, the MRS will request the help of a control engineer who, at any given time, can take the management of the system into their own hands.
The interaction of the MRS modules is planned to be conducted using the concept of intelligent spaces, which is actively developed by the specialists of the international research laboratory “Intelligent Technologies for Socio-Cyberphysical Systems”.
“This concept aims to ensure shared access to information based on an ontology-oriented mechanism of publication and subscriptions, which allows to maintain semantic interpretability in the interactions between the MRS modules. Because the MRS can only be used in emergency situations (for example, in counter-terrorism operations), we also have to ensure comprehensive safety protection of modular interactions,” explains Alexey Kashevnik.
According to the expert, what helped the team win was their in-depth approach to the topic of the project, as well as their high-quality presentation and their well-organized teamwork where each member took their individual responsibilities extremely seriously.
“The experience I got is completely unique. For me, it was the first conference that offered such kind of team projects in addition to the main sections, which were very interesting and informative. Among the events I most enjoyed was a workshop on the preparation of TED Talk-style presentations and a workshop on upscaling scientific reports. Participating in the conference allowed me to gain valuable new experience and knowledge firsthand from Russia’s leading young researchers, winners of presidential grants and contests organized by Russian Science Foundation, and up the interdisciplinarity of my research thanks to working alongside specialists from different scientific fields,” says Alexey Kashevnik.
The awards ceremony for the winners took place at the closing of the conference. Taking part were Mikhail Kotyukov, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, and Grigory Trubnikov, First Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.
Mentorship of the projects
Some ITMO University specialists took on the role of mentors for the project teams of young scientists. For one, Head of the Digital Humanities Lab Antonina Puchkovskaya served as a mentor in the section “Humanities-Enabled Human Activity”.
The participants of this section developed the project on establishing Russian culture centers abroad for uniting Russian expats all over the world. Compared to the existing centers functioning under the aegis of Russian consulates and embassies, the innovation of the group led by Antonina Puchkovskaya was that such centers would be created on a ready-made basis and then spread all throughout the host country so that as many people as possible could connect with the Russian culture.
“It’s important to note that just as we were taught at Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, where we went in April for a short-term workshop, a mentor’s main responsibility is not to teach or impose their ideas on the group they coordinate, but rather to guide their work onto the right path that will lead them to success. Thus, within the framework of our section, mentors had to help the participants form the idea of the project, create an appropriately topical road map, come up with questions for the scientific community, prepare the final presentation and deliver it to a committee of experts,” shares Antonina Puchkovskaya. “I found this experience very unique and helpful, as I combine teaching and mentoring in my day-to-day work. But the forum allowed me to see what it would be like to focus solely on mentorship tasks for a couple of days.”
Science communication
Working on the forum’s science communication agenda was the team led by Alexandra Borisova, Co-founder and President of the Association for Communication in Education and Science (AKSON) and Head of ITMO University’s Master’s program in Science Communication.
One part of this task had to do with analyzing and improving the communication plans, key messages and other elements involved in the project groups’ work. A special informal meeting took place on the first day of the forum, which included presentations by Grigory Trubnikov, First Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Nikita Marchenkov, Chair of the Coordination Council for Youth Affairs in the Sphere of Science and Education under the Presidential Council for Science and Education, and Dmitry Malkov, Head of ITMO University’s Science Communication and Outreach Office, who expanded on all the objectives of the Strategy for the Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation that concern the establishment of communication systems in science, technologies and innovations.
“Over the course of the following days of the forum, the participants were divided into project groups in different thematic sections. There were seven sections altogether, all corresponding to the Strategy’s priority areas of transport systems, security, healthcare, digital technologies, agriculture, humanities, and ecology. Each section had its own moderators, expert mentors and mentors on communication. As for the communication part, we see the results to be very positive. Scientists have really started thinking about the importance of forming a societal demand for research, as well as about target audiences of projects and promotion of the latter’s results,” comments Dmitry Malkov.
Apart from the sections, the forum’s program included a business game “Immersion Effect”, which was created by Olga Dobrovidova, science journalist and associate professor at ITMO University. The game’s some 70 participants were divided into groups of mass media editorials which had to work on covering a comical “scientific breakthrough”. The editorial teams could take comments of press offices and all kinds of experts, all to form a firsthand understanding of how science journalists work and how to act on covering contentious subjects in tight timeframes.
Among the participants of the forum were graduates and students of ITMO’s Master’s program in Science Communication. One alum, Daniil Shirokov, helped with coordinating project groups, while second-year student Ekaterina Erokhina worked at the info booth of the project “Science and I” as a member of the science pop media Indicator.
Covering the workings of the forum were three current students of the Science Communication Master’s program, who worked as part of the student media center. One of the students, Yana Plekhovich, managed to speak to the Russian-American chemist, professor at the University of Southern California Valery Fokin and spintronics and photonics specialist and professor at the University of Southampton Alexey Kavokin. The students also got to interview the famous Russian chemist, crystallography expert and professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences Artem Oganov, asking his advice on how to get published in Nature.
“What I found the most difficult at the forum was not getting lost in this massive sea of information. There were lots and lots of sections and workshops taking place at the same time, and I had to choose one event that wouldn’t clash with what my colleagues opted to cover. And then to create content on the spot. It was hard at first to approach speakers and ask them for an interview, or to participate in our podcast or video stream. But this fear went away pretty quickly. Actually, it was very rare that people said no. On the contrary, everyone was very enthusiastic about participating,” shares Yana Plekhovich, a first-year student of the Master’s program in Science Communication.
All in all, the student media center Young Media was powered by a team of nine young journalists, including the participants from Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. The editorial team was coordinated by the specialists from the Laba.Media group and science journalist Olga Orlova. As noted by Yana Plekhovich, participating in the forum allowed her to combat the fear of talking with prominent experts, behave confidently in front of the camera, quickly adapt to new teams and work in conditions of constant time crunch. The student says that these skills will come in handy in her future career.
