Astrakhan State University Meets New Partners in Finland

An ASU delegation, headed by Rector Konstantin Markelov, visited the campuses of the University of Eastern Finland, located in Joensuu and Kuopio, and met with the heads of university units and representatives of Arbonaut company.

The University of Eastern Finland is the largest academic centre in the country and the recognized leader in the sphere of education. It offers more than 100 majors and trains more than 15,500 students.

The scope of Finnish university’s activity covers, among other things, artificial intelligence, digital technologies and implementation of double-degree diplomas together with other HEIs. The university is interested in student exchange with ASU and is ready to launch the project as early as next year. Besides, teachers and students of Astrakhan State University were invited to take part in prestigious IT conferences that are held by the Finnish university on a regular basis.

During the official visit, the representatives of Astrakhan State University discussed some issues of cooperation with the heads of several units of the University of Eastern Finland — its Higher School of Computing and Photonics Institute, which conducts research and delivers a number of courses on optics and photonics to its students.

Upon the meeting results, the parties agreed on signing an agreement on cooperation in the spheres of IT, robotic engineering, material engineering, including welding and photonic technologies, and implementing joint programmes of student and professor exchange. ASU will be a centre for transferring technologies from Russia to Finland through Business Joensuu Oy business technopark, while Finland will provide information on developing technologies that will be relevant for Astrakhan region and Russia in general. Besides, the representatives of the Russian and Finnish universities agreed to launch cooperation between the ASU Boiling Point coworking centre and Oasis — a similar structure of the University of Eastern Finland.

Arbonaut company, working in the sphere of management of nature resources, forest resource management and GIS systems, also is ready to cooperate with Astrakhan State University. At the meeting, the parties discussed possible partnership; in particular, an ASU student Dmitry Reztsov presented his project of EGODRONE quadcopter.