In his speech, the president said that new technologies greatly affect our lives and open new opportunities for development, yet they also give rise to new global challenges. Vladimir Putin stressed the role of the youth in meeting these challenges; according to him, it is the young generation that will have to fulfill the hopes of the current and continue to solve mankind's global problems. He added that Russia already contributes to this cause by actively engaging the potential of fundamental science and training highly qualified specialists. The president marked out the high competitiveness of the Russian IT sphere, its companies and specialists, and used this chance to congratulate ITMO's champions with their recent victory at ACM ICPC.

“Our country’s specialists don’t just offer the best and unique software solutions – they create a whole new field of knowledge; an environment for development of economy and life. To further increase our professional and technological advantages in digital economy, we intend to focus our work on the fields that are vital to the economic system. It is necessary to form a flexible base for integration of digital technology into all aspects of everyday life; at the same time, all decisions must be based on the principles of information security. The government will also provide support to those companies and organizations that are working on development of inventions and competencies in digital technology. The government, with the help of private businesses, will create a basic infrastructure for a digital economy, including secure communication lines and data processing centers. We intend to greatly increase the amount of digital economy experts in training and to achieve complete digitalization and digital literacy,” – says Vladimir Putin.

We'd like to remind our readers that on May 24th ITMO's team became the world champions in collegiate programming at ACM ICPC-2017 - one of the world's most prestigious collegiate programming championships that took place in Rapid City (USA). The team, consisting of Vladimir Smykalov, Ivan Belonogov and Ilya Zban, solved 10 of the tournament's 12 tasks faster and with more efficiency than any of their competitors. ACM ICPC was conducted for the 41st time; this year, the contest gathered 133 teams from all around the world; no university in the world has ever bested ITMO's record: the university's teams participate in ACM ICPC since 1993, and have won the tournament 12 times since 2000 including this year's victory.

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum takes place from June 1st to 3rd. This year, its main topic is finding a new balance in the global economy. The forum's program was developed with the help of more than 200 leading experts from Russia, European countries, Asia, USA, North and Latin America. More than 12,000 guests from 130 countries participate in the forum.