Chess robot "Kaissa", system to recognise micro–reflections of human emotions, single-handed electrolysis burner, modeling the evolution of the primary black holes accumulation – the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI has held the 21st All-Russian contest of schoolchildren scientific works "Junior".
This year, more than 800 high school students representing many regions of Russia and other countries took part in the qualifying round of the competition. The jury admitted 223 projects to the final stage. Traditionally, the section "Physics and astronomy" became the most numerous – 71 projects.
In welcoming speech the first vice-rector of MEPhI O.V. Nagornov congratulated participants on reaching the final and wished the schoolchildren to perform well in front of the jury and show good results at the Olympiad.
P.V. Sushkov, the head of the educational programs of the Innovation management unit at the Rosatom state corporation, noted that "Junior" was honest, interesting and exciting contest in the field of supporting scientific engineering technological competencies in Russia and was a part of the global movement. "I am pleased that Rosatom has been a partner of this wonderful event for decades. The most valuable thing for the state corporation is not cars and buildings, but intelligence and people. That’s why we look so closely at our future, and our future is you."
JSC "Concern Rosenergoatom" implements a number of programs to support talented young people: competitions, and targeted enrollment, scholarship and grant support for students and teachers of the University. Head of the project of the personnel evaluation and development at the Department of the personnel training of JSC "Concern Rosenergoatom" I.A. Shapovalova: "We hope that many of you will join our team. First of all, we are waiting for children with "burning eyes" and who seek to build a scientific career,” said Irina Andreevna and invited schoolchildren to enroll in MEPhI, as MEPhI is the main University in training personnel for Rosatom.
The history of "Junior" has a lot of nice pages, starting from the fact that Intel has chosen the University for cooperation in the creation of the competition up to high results and achievements at the Intel ISEF in the USA. This was told by the permanent head of the jury, head of the Department of informatics and management processes, Professor A.D. Modyaev. He recommended the participants to be able to competently and confidently addressing the jury. "In the course of the work you will receive new knowledge, skills, and competences. Top class is when received knowledge will be not only of your interest, but acquire significance for the scientific community as well,” summed up Alexey Dmitrievich.
"Junior" is a contest where, on the one hand, the participants decide the tasks of the Olympiad in the subjects of the chosen direction, and on the other - defend scientific projects in the same direction.
The contest was held in two major directions, each of which consisted of several sections – "Engineering Sciences" (Physics and astronomy, Mathematics, Robotics, Informatics) and "Natural Sciences" (Biology and ecology, Chemistry).
The guys defended their projects before a jury, which traditionally included not only the representatives of MEPhI, but also the leading Moscow universities, employees of the RAS. This is allowed to objectively, comprehensively and professionally assess the work of students.
The level of submitted projects was very high, which indicates the growing interest of Russian young people in engineering.
The winners of the contest were congratulated and awarded with diplomas, valuable prizes and certificates by the heads of MEPhI’s institutes, as well as partners of the contest.
According to the results of the work, the organizing committee determined the Russian national team for the international contest of engineering creativity of schoolchildren Intel ISEF (May 2018, USA). It includes: Egor Batarin (Moscow,), Irina Belousova (Moscow), Elizaveta Sovdagarova (Moscow), Vladimir Kharitonov (Moscow), Maksim Mamchur (Samara), Roman Nikolaenko (Moscow).
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The All-Russian schoolchildren contest "Junior" ha been held in MEPhI since 1998 on natural and technical directions. The competition is held in order to develop the interest of students of 9-11 grades in creative project activities.
"Junior" contest is included in the list of school Olympiads of 2017-2018 academic year, so the winners of the competition will be able to get significant benefits for admission to universities of the Russian Federation.
The contest organizers are the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI and the State corporation Rosatom. The traditional sponsor of the contest was "1C" – a well-known Russian IT-company that creates software products for accounting.
Russian high school students regularly win the Intel ISEF finals. In the first year of participation, "juniors" took the 2nd place in the world in mathematics and received a special prize in Computer science. In 2017 this competition was held in Los Angeles (USA), it was attended by 1,770 students from 70 countries. The Russian team took 9 prizes, 5 of them were taken by "Junior" winners.
