KBSU team is a winner of the Data-hackathon for solving global social problems

A team of students from the Institute of Informatics, Electronics and Robotics of the Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after H.M. Berbekov took the II place in the Data-hackathon for solving global social problems, which was held on July 22 — 23, 2021 as part of the international competition for digital solutions World AI & Data Challenge with the support of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives and the Boiling Point of KBSU.

The prize place of the team of our university in the Russian hackathon is a natural result, — comments on the result of the acting rector of KBSU, Doctor of Technical Sciences Yuri Altudov. — Modern society is actively moving towards digital transformation, in these conditions it becomes relevant to determine the degree of influence of modern universities on the socio-economic and cultural development of the regions of the Russian Federation. In the process of digitalization of the real sector of the economy, the demand for specialized specialists is constantly growing. Russian universities are faced with the task of meeting the need for technical specialists in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, big data, etc. The most in-demand universities will be those that led the first wave of digital transformation and, in cooperation with government and business, are taking decisive steps into the digital economy. One of the priority vectors of the educational process at KBSU is the training of personnel for the digital economy.
More than 20 teams took part online in the data-hackathon on solving global social problems on July 22-23, 2021, however, due to the complexity of the tasks, less than 10 teams reached the end. The teams’ performances were evaluated by five experts from Grozny, Yaroslavl, Tula, Kostroma and Nalchik.

The task manager of the KBSU team is Tatiana Khashirova, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Computer Technologies and Information Security of IEEiR. The idea of ​​the work of the students of KBSU Asya Chochieva, Anzoar Gergova, Abdul Gazaev and Inal Eleev was to use the mathematical apparatus and modern computer technologies to assess the ecological stability of the natural landscapes of the KBR.

Noting that the problem of ecology has always been, is and will be relevant for all regions and for the whole world, the experts expressed their wishes on methods for solving this problem, gave useful advice on the implementation of the hypothesis.

«On the first day of the hackathon, we managed to create common interfaces for a client-server application in the future, and we also managed to show a model for calculating the soil erosion coefficient. We have displayed the obtained results in our presentation. They performed with her on the second day,» — commented Anzor Gergov.

Everything went very interesting and organized, I would like to thank the organizers, experts and all participants for such an experience. In the future, the team plans to continue the implementation of the task and hopes for good, productive work and for obtaining the planned result,
— added Asya Chochieva.

KBR in the expert group was represented by the senior lecturer of the Department of Computer Technologies and Information Security, Deputy Director for Educational and Career Guidance of the IIEiR KBSU Maryana Georgieva.

«The guys come to hackathons not only to win, but also to learn a lot of new things, to take part in different master classes. In the future, team mentors will help with the implementation of the task.
The hackathon complements the learning process. The guys enjoy this: they work together on the task and implement the project idea,» — says expert Georgieva.

According to the terms of the hackathon, the finalists need to finalize their solutions to the problems and submit the finished projects to the jury in September.

The best solutions will be implemented throughout Russia, presented for replication in other countries and placed in open source. Any government organization or private company can implement the practice they like.

KBSU already has a successful experience of participating in this competition. So, in August 2020, the team of KBSU «IT-Tourist» (Ilyas Niyazov, Samat Zhabelov, Asker Pshenokov, Karen Nalchadzhi, Azamat Gabaev) entered the top ten among 70 Russian teams of city and university «Boiling points» — participants in the second stage of international data -hackathon World AI & Data Challenge, organized by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) in conjunction with the World Bank. Then our students chose a topic that is very relevant for Kabardino-Balkaria — «Calculation of statistics of visits to specially protected natural areas by tourists (SPNA), using the geodata of cellular operators.»

Training of specialists in the field of information and communication technologies, the need for which in Russia exceeds 200 thousand people,

Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after H. M. Berbekov has been carrying out with the assistance of the Russian company ITV for five years | AxxonSoft. The university provides training for programmers, solution developers, technical engineers, network administrators.

Within the framework of interaction with Moscow colleagues, a Training Center was created, the task of which is to form a technical and organizational infrastructure to improve the quality of educational and research activities, expand the scope of application of information technologies in the educational process, improve the quality of training and retraining of qualified specialists using new technologies and organizational infrastructure.

KBSU was the first university in the North Caucasus to organize training for students and teachers at the Huawei Authorized Information and Communication Academy.

For reference:

The Data Hackathon is part of a large international competition for solving global social problems using AI & Data, which is supported by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. The best developments will be introduced throughout Russia, as well as presented for replication in other countries. The competition was given tasks from various fields: healthcare, agriculture, urban environment, education, tourism, culture, etc. For IT-specialists this is not only an opportunity to try themselves in solving global problems, but also to show their abilities to the best Russian experts, customers, find like-minded people, as well as ideas for a startup. A reward is provided for the winners of the competition — the prize fund of the II stage is 5.5 million rubles. You can find out more details and register for participation in the hackathon on the project website.