NTI Young Engineers’ Competition: tasks and teamwork
NTI which stands for National Technological Initiative is a program of global technological leadership in Russia by 2035. This program entails support and development of promising industries which over the next 20 years can become fundamental for the world economy. The All-Russian NTI Young Engineers’ Competition is devoted to the acquisition and development of knowledge and skills that are in demand at the world’s new markets.
This competition took place last year for the first time and now the organizers plan to conduct it annually. RVC (Russian Venture Company - Ed.) and the Agency for Strategic Initiatives are the organizers of Young Engineers’ contest. Students from grades 7 to 11 can take part in the competition. The tasks of the competition are project-oriented and are aimed at training kids’ teamwork skills. That is why schoolchildren are given hands-on tasks; and starting from the second selection round, the participants form teams in which they begin to distribute tasks and responsibility.
The NTI contest has three stages: first one is an individual selection stage where students solve tasks grouped around the academic subjects (mathematics, physics, computer science, chemistry or biology - all within their chosen profile); the second one is a team selection stage during which the participants already form groups and solve applied problems at the intersection of different disciplines in online simulators and on the MOOC platform; and the third stage - the finals which will take place at the Sirius Educational Center in Sochi this year and at several venues in Moscow, as well as in Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Vladivostok, Tomsk and St. Petersburg. As the organizers of the contest comment, the finalists of the contest will work with real engineering equipment, applying their knowledge and skills demonstrated at the qualifying stages.
NTI Contest. Source: nti-contest.ru
This year’s competition exposure is far beyond Russia: schoolkids from Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus took part in it. All participants could choose one or more tracks from 17 contest profiles (available in Russian). Among them - "Autonomous transport systems", "Communication systems and ERS", "Big Data and machine learning", "Smart robotic systems", "Neurotechnologies in Prosthetics". ITMO, STEM-GAMES and Moscow Polytech have embarked on a joint venture and developed the portfolio "Nanosystems and nanoengineering”.
"Nanosystems and nanoengineering" track
This profile is based on the interrelation of physics, chemistry and biology within the modern scientific world. At its first stage, participants solved problems as part of individual subject disciplines. Solving tasks for each subject of this profile took two days. The second stage featured a combined task, requiring knowledge in several disciplines. As Mikhail Mukhin, the Head of ITMO’s Nanocenter of Metamaterials Lab, points out: at this track’s level the participants performed tasks close to real ones. At the second stage the students had to form teams which enabled them to accumulate their collective knowledge and skills and effectively allocate time for work on the project. Tasks of the second stage prepared the participants for the enclosing challenge which the students have to face in the finals. This year the task is aimed at solving nanobiotechnology problems.
"The aim of the second stage of selection was to immerse the guys in the subject area fully. That's why we developed a simulator that allowed Hepatitis C diagnosis applying medical markers on samples, developing a medicine for treating this disease and testing it in this simulator and estimating how effectively it will interact with hepatitis C cells. This simulator was available on Stepik platform. The guys could offer several solutions at once, for each of the following, if it was more successful, they would receive more and more points. Everything was checked automatically and the simulator which was specially invented for this contest made it possible to evaluate and rank the quality of the proposed solutions more effectively," says Mikhail Mukhin.
Mikhail Mukhin
Parallel to solving the tasks of the contest tracks students could obtain additional knowledge necessary for performing tasks in interdisciplinary areas. Simultaneously with the competition, Stepik.org platform launched online courses that helped participants broaden their horizons beyond the school curriculum and meet modern engineering requirements.
More than 2,400 schoolchildren from Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan took part in the first stage of the "Nanosystems and nanoengineering" track. 382 kids passed to the second round and some of them formed teams of three to five people before the finals. Finals will feature 44 participants who have formed 12 teams. Fourth, eighth and ninth places in the overall ranking were taken by teams of only one participant the youngest of whom is in the 9th grade. The final round of the Young Engineers Competition will be held at the Sirius Educational Center at the end of February. The contestants will have to form final line-ups of their teams which will perform the main engineering task of the contest.
Finals at Sirius
Finalists of the NTI competition will compete in nine tracks in Sochi, including ITMO co-curated "Nanosystems and nanoengineering" track. The remaining pool of winners of the qualifying stages will compete at the universities supporting the project in Moscow, as well as at different venues in Kazan, Tomsk, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg. 640 schoolchildren from all over Russia and several CIS states made it to the finals. What is characteristic for this year’s contest, participants had no restrictions in their choice of tracks, which is why many performed tasks on several tracks at once. As Mikhail Mukhin points out, on the one hand, this variation affected the overall results (and not always for the better), but on the other hand, a wider choice helped schoolchildren determine the tracks of their actual interest.
NTI Contest. Source: nti-contest.ru
According to the organizers, this year, unlike the previous one, when the winners from the central region of our country prevailed, the majority of finalists were from Siberia: more than 100 participants who made it to finals represent the Novosibirsk region. St. Petersburg lead the way this year also. While last year schoolchildren from the Northern capital could not break into the top ten, this year they made it to second place in terms of the number of finalists - 50 young Petersburgers are to perform tasks at the competition finals.
As part of the finals (to be held at Sirius on February 23-28 in Sochi), the winners of the second stage of all nine contest tracks will have to perform a team task that involves solving applied engineering problems and an individual test, the aim of which would be to objectively determine knowledge and skills of each contestant in the fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry and biology.
This year, as part of the "Nanosystems and nanoengineering" track, the finalists will be offered a task at the intersection of biology and nanotechnology. Participants will have to test the chain of actions used to synthesize pure protein from the pre-developed genetic material.
And what is it for, you may ask. Thanks to the data received lately, it is known that many diseases, including hereditary diseases, are “governed” precisely by the violation of the functioning of certain proteins and protein complexes. In modern medical industry, proteins are already widely used: take insulin or substitutes for digestive enzymes for instance. With the improvement of methods of logistics and delivery, the amount of protein drugs will increase, especially since the future promises us the prospect of synthesizing selected protein variants for each patient individually.
NTI Contest. nti-contest.ru
The contest finalist will have a chance to fully immerse in this subject area as part of their track work at Sirius. The first round of the final task will involve E. coli culture plasmid development. This is one of the options for obtaining the material for further transfection (cell-free synthesis systems may be used for it as well). Similarly, genetic material is obtained in pharmacology, but participants have to find a balance between the amount of plasmid and its purity.
The second stage in actual industrial settings also takes place with the use of bacteria, but the task developers will suggest that participants would be using a common laboratory system for obtaining the protein - HEK cultures (human embryonic kidney - Ed.). It is known that the yield of HEKs is noticeably lower than that of bacterial systems. Therefore, participants will have to assess the applicability of such cultures for creating individual medicines, and not just for laboratory needs.
“Rosnano Foundation for Infrastructural Educational Programs, which is the sponsor of the track, has a large portfolio of nanobiotechnology companies. We have pre-designed particular tasks in physics, chemistry and biology for the contestants together with our Moscow colleagues. As a result of active discussions of this project with Rosnano representatives and Moscow colleagues, we realized that this year it is most interesting to invite participants to try themselves out in the field of nanobiotechnology. This is not a speculative task, but rather one that needs a clear solution. Therefore, developing the solutions on the simulator and testing them in real time, conducting this whole research, the guys were able to get a real feel of the process of drug development, which is carried out practically, at high-tech companies", - says Ivan Mukhin, research associate and the Head of ITMO’s Nanocenter of Metamaterials Lab.
What’s there at stake for the winners?
Since 2017, "Nanosystems and nanoengineering" track is included in the list of the Russian Council of School Academic Contests and gives certain bonuses to its toppers when enrolling at universities. This year the winners of the young engineer’s contest will receive 100 USE points upon admission to ITMO, and the runners-up will earn plus 10 points to their USE scores as a blue ribbon for individual achievements.
NTI Contest. nti-contest.ru
As Mikhail Mukhin comments, students who gain experience in project activities at the contest will receive bonuses once entering ITMO and not just that. While already studying at the university they will be able to continue their practical work within the chosen areas. For example, at the Department of Physics and Technology of the University: students who are freshmen and sophomores can work at the metamaterial laboratory, and start doing project work.
"The guys who have not only strong subject area training, but also experience in project activities, have communicative abilities and are able to work in a team are usually the ones who show initiative and think outside the box. That's why they certainly have an advantage in any professional work over their less prepared rivals. After all, it happens often that, graduating from high school and having a set of fundamental knowledge, the graduate then simply can’t apply it properly. Such project-oriented contests prepare full-fledged engineers who are able to carry out any actual project activities, and already from their high school years can apply their skills in performing more complex tasks," - says the Head of ITMO’s Nanocenter of Metamaterials Lab.
Future prospects
In the future, the All-Russian NTI Engineering Competition can not only expand its geography and number of directions, but also the number of sites and competition grounds. The finals of the first competition in 2016 were held only at Sirius - and this year Sochi will host the finalists of nine tracks, and the remaining venues will be organized at universities, partners of the project - who will be curators for each of the specific areas - all throughout the country. Mikhail Mukhin makes a point that in the future the number of such “base” universities will only increase. In addition to that, these universities will be able to host not only participants of one of the tracks, but rather become a full-fledged alternative to Sirius, where it will be possible to organize project activities for finalists of several tracks at once. At the same time, final tests on the same tracks can be conducted simultaneously at different venues and in different regions of the country - and an objective system for evaluating the results will identify the best of the best, regardless of their original geographical location.
