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The conference, which was held in a hybrid format, included 120 sessions in eight fields: Life Sciences; Chemoinformatics and Chemical Engineering; Artificial Intelligence; Information Technology; The Future of the Economy in the Era of Technological Change: The Role of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation; Humans and Digital Future: Sciences, Arts, and Well-Being; Energy-Efficient Engineering Systems and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Technologies; and Physics and Engineering. 

The event also featured workshops on making presentations and stress management, a scientific Mafia, and an open discussion on science promotion at universities by the Student Research Association (SRA). 

Winners were selected in two main categories: Best Report by Young Scientist and Best Report by School Student. In 2025, more than 350 students were declared winners; they received contest certificates, as well as additional perks when applying to ITMO: namely, extra points for prospective Bachelor’s students and exam-free enrollment for prospective Master’s and PhD students.

The best reports will be published in the event’s proceedings or recommended for publication in ITMO’s scientific journal. 

From AI systems to new materials 

For the second year in a row, the congress closes with an exhibition of inventions by ITMO’s young scientists. Winners receive financial support of up to 100,000 rubles for future participation in other exhibitions and research projects. 

This year, the organizers received over 40 applications in four categories, 27 of which passed the selection. The most popular categories among applicants were: Artificial Intelligence and Information Technology (14 projects) and Chemical and Biochemical Systems and Materials (9 projects). 

One of the projects was submitted by Master’s students at the Faculty of Ecotechnologies who found a safer way to remove oil from the Black Sea water. As it’s currently done manually, which takes time, energy, and many resources, the team proposed using a special biological product that will break down oil in the water. At the core of the technology are microorganisms that feed on oil products and turn them into nontoxic substances that no longer need to be removed from the water. 

“We tested seven available and suitable products to find the most efficient one, Bioros, which was developed in 2016 to clean soil at hydrocarbon production sites. Within ten days of its use, the concentration of fuel oil is reduced by 36%, and the size of its particles decreases significantly. This was proved not only experimentally but also by an AI algorithm that can determine the area of oil spills in samples throughout the ten-day experiment. We submitted our observations to the Educational Centre Sirius and hope our development will accelerate purification processes in the Black Sea,” notes Daria Afanasova, an author of the project and a Master’s student at ITMO’s Faculty of Ecotechnologies. 

Another team prompted attendees to reflect on how the work of an archeologist will look like in 200 years. Their project A Study of Future Archeologists is built on a custom AI system that can tell about the life of people at a certain period based on archeological artifacts and known historical notes. 

“We assumed that some information from our time will be lost in 200 years; that’s why we trained our AI on data with a 20% error margin. These include photographs, historical references, news, and other materials. So far, we managed to put our system to test only on one artifact – a soil sample with traces of human presence at the Sestroretsk Spill. The AI’s output turned out to be close to facts,” explains Alexey Feskov, an author of the project and the head of the training workshops at ITMO Technopark. 

Among other technologies presented at the event were: a smartphone-compatible portable device for checking food expiration dates and quality; a biocompatible material that can be used to study bone development stages in living creatures or grow bones in the lab; a microalgae-based system for reducing greenhouse gasses in the air; an AI text summarizer; and an audio processing model that can provide information on the audio content, speaker, and sound environment.