Program of the Conference
The ITMO Open Science program has several sections, each with a different format and focus. The conference will start with a MegaBattle when the heads of all ITMO’s schools will share about their major achievements over the last year and talk about their departments’ science development strategies. MegaBattle will be held in the Science Slam format: everyone will have only 25 minutes to report about the results of their work and answer colleagues’ questions.
The next section, Power Pitch, will feature a series of short 3-minute reports covering the most significant achievements of each department.
After that, the conference’s participants will be offered to visit the Future Now section, during which 20 participants will present their electronic banners, as well as the prototypes of their own innovative projects. It is here where you’ll be able to get an insight into the latest scientific developments and ask all your questions regarding the technologies on display. The Power Pitch and Future Now sections will be held in three stages, each covering some particular topic.
“ITMO Open Science is a new conference organized by ITMO University and aimed at establishing collaboration between different University’s departments. The idea was to make it both simple and entertaining to keep our participants interested. The program committee did their best to select the most interesting projects,” comments Alexey Slobozhanyuk, the head of the conference’s program committee and a research associate at ITMO’s Faculty of Physics and Engineering.
He adds that such conferences have long been held in many leading universities abroad. For example, MIT regularly organizes such meetings to give their staff an opportunity to share the results of their work in an informal setting. The Australian National University hosts the annual Founder’s Day conference, which provides the university’s staff with a platform for dialogue and cooperation.
Another section is called Open Talk and features a series of interviews. All the sections are interspersed with guided tours at Erarta, one of the biggest museums of contemporary art in the world.
Participants
Any ITMO University staff interested in research, be it a department head, a Master’s or a PhD student, can partake in the conference, share the results of their projects and establish new partnerships. The selection process is carried out by the program committee. To apply for participation, fill in the application form here.
The conference’s program will have been validated by January 25. There’ll be a webcast available on ITMO University’s social media on the day of the event.
Prospects
In the future, the conference’s coordinators plan to continue holding conferences in this format. They say that it has already demonstrated its efficiency and thus has a great potential in Russia.
“ITMO University has been developing very rapidly over the past few years. I joined ITMO ten years ago, and I can see that the University has undergone a significant transformation since then. Any modern university should make it their priority to search for new, creative formats,” shares Alexey Slobozhanyuk. “It’s not that simple though. You have to actually organize the conference first, test if it works. But eventually, it will definitely pay off. The thing is that we often have no idea about what’s going on in other departments, what equipment and resources they have, what projects they are working on. This conference is aimed at solving this very topical problem so that instead of looking for specialists and equipment abroad, we would find those inside the university’s walls. Apart from that, if we communicate with each other on a regular basis, we’ll be able to work more efficiently and take our science to the next level.”
Get the latest news about the conference on its official website.
