In their study, the analysts considered the key digital solutions implemented by Russian universities: educational technologies, smart buildings, communications and platforms, AI and analytics, security, lifestyle services, and R&D environment. ITMO received the highest marks in system AI solutions, complex digital solutions for education and infrastructure, as well as services for daily use at the university, thus landing in the top spot of the ranking.
One of the actively developing digitalization aspects at ITMO is the delegation of routine research tasks to AI assistants. In 2025, the team of ITMO’s Research Center “Strong AI in Industry” developed ChemCoScientist, a digital assistant for chemists that helps generate new chemical compounds and predict chemical properties, and can work with data from scientific articles. Another AI assistant, this time for physicists, was presented at the recent Congress of Young Scientists at Sirius (Sochi). And the AI-Materials Project by researchers from ITMO’s School of Physics and Engineering simplifies theoretical calculations and helps determine the physical properties of materials.
ITMO also boasts the only fully digital PhD defense procedure in the country. Applicants can submit their documents digitally, thesis council members and opponents can join the defense online, and the PhD diploma includes a QR code that links to all of the graduate’s thesis materials.
All kinds of educational and work processes at ITMO are supported by a wide network of digital tools. In 2024, developers from ITMO’s Department of Website Management presented Edita, an internal service for creating websites on the university’s domain. Now every member of staff can create an ITMO-branded website for their tasks even without programming skills. The builder is regularly updated with new templates and features.
The portal and app my.itmo contains class schedules and information on stipends, as well as allows users to sign up for courses and sports clubs, get access to corporate cloud services, and order all kinds of documents. Moreover, there is a separate service for working with the university’s grading point system, as well as the itmo.map app for navigating the campus.
