News

We are pleased to invite you to participate in the 2014 Academica Week conference “Young People as Constructors of Our Future. Trowel, Computer, Compass – to Whom and Why?“ Assembly Hall of University of Tartu (Ülikooli 18, Tartu). 14th of October, at 12.15

On Sunday, November 9th at 11:30-19:00 at the UT Economics Faculty (Narva mnt 4-A314, Tartu) takes place University of Tartu Idea Lab "Idea Killing Sunday". What is happening? - Different tracks for newcomers, Vega teams, and active Tramm11 teams. - Meeting with mentors from different fields - Training and practice about building a minimum viable product: example of the landing page - Pitching competition

Konstantin Tretjakov, Research Fellow in Bioinformatics at the University of Tartu, won the third place at the international competition of big data analytics TEXATA among more than 2000 competitors.

Prof Marlon Dumas received recognition for laudable outcome in devoted action as programme manager for Software Engineering international Master's programme, a joint curriculum in the University of Tartu and in Tallinn University of Technology which the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science in UT is coordinating. Dumas was entitled "Aasta programmijuht" (program manager of the year). See also further information about Master of Science in Software Engineering.

Erasmus exchange students of the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu have demonstrated that it is possible to fully take over the control of commercial drones. Weak drone security leads to cyber attack opportunities against drones.

The European Union has emphasised that Europe needs new and geographically more dispersed centres of excellence in research. Proceeding from that, the UT, the TUT and the University of Edinburgh submitted a proposal to the European Union to create the IT competence centre in Estonia. The idea to create the centre of excellence was successful in the first round of the competition.

The new call for applications of the Vega fund of the SEB and UT Idea Lab is open until 1 March. This time, only development projects are supported. On 20 February at 14, an information event is held at the Idea Lab that gives an overview of the conditions of applying for the Vega fund development project support. So far, Vega fund has supported the development of eight prototypes: the first time with 14,300 euros and the second time with 22,900 euros.

In Estonia, the public and private sector have databases the merging and analysis of which could help the state and enterprises make better management decisions. However, such consolidation of data would be a serious threat to privacy and violate data protection rules.

On 9 March, the University of Tartu launched its MOOC “About Programming” that is very popular among learners. Together with the MOOC “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” that started last week, the free e-courses of the University of Tartu have attracted more than 1000 people from Estonia and 70 other countries. The leader of the first Estonian-language MOOC, lecturer of the Institute of Computer Science Eno Tõnisson said that as many as 650 people registered for the MOOC “About Programming” in only a couple of days.

From 8 to 15 March, students of Marymount University participate in the international continuing education programme on cyber security at the University of Tartu. Participants of the programme visit the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia as well as Skype, Microsoft and other enterprises in Estonia and Finland. The 24 students participating in the programme come from various countries, including the USA, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Barbados, India and Ethiopia.

On 19 May, a seminar on intellectual property (IP) in software development will be held at the University of Tartu main building, Ülikooli 18-232.

The European life-science infrastructure for biological information ELIXIR has been awarded €19 million from the EU to accelerate the implementation of Europe’s life‑science data infrastructure over the next four years. The University of Tartu is the only partner in ELIXIR from Estonia.

A report was published which evaluates ICT related research activity in Estonian research institutions. The University of Tartu was given the highest grade in the ICT domain. The main recommendations were to develop international recruitment and ICT infrastructure.

Starting from the next academic year, the stipends allocated to the students of programmes in Computer Science will increase to motivate students to study full time in the areas of priority for Estonia. For the first time, nearly half the IT students will receive the stipend.

On September 8, the election commissions approved the dean candidates for the University of Tartu’s four faculties. The new deans are elected at the end of September and beginning of October and their term of office begins on 1 January 2016 when the university’s academic units continue as four faculties within the new structure.

The International Student Cluster Competition will take place in Frankfurt next week where the Estonian team will be the only Baltic team. Estonia will be represented by a team of students from the University of Tartu’s Institute of Computer Science who have been specially trained for the competition by professors, lecturers and doctoral students.

Academic Year Opening Ceremony, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science is held on Monday, 31 August 2015 beginning at 14.00 at Tartu Heino Eller Music School, Tubin hall (entrance from the courtyard). Anthem Opening words – Dean prof Tõnu Kollo Festive speech – Head of the Institute of Computer Science prof Jaak Vilo Presentation of Heads of the Institutes and the professors

The IT Law Programme invites you to a discussion with a distinguished IT Law and data protection specialist professor Lee Bygrave from Oslo University. He will give his talk on Friday, October 9, 2015, from 14.15 to 17.30 at the Faculty of Law, Näituse 20 room 103. The talk will cover the following topics:

Live stream from the Scandinavian biggest business forum starts on October 1st at 1:00 pm and on October 2nd at 10:00 am. The event is held at UT Oeconmicum (Narva mnt 4), room A 314. The panel of speakers is outstanding. You will have the change to hear:

The research project Usable and Efficient Secure Multi-party Computation led by Cybernetica AS received the highest possible mark from the European Commission in the final assessment. Recommendations by researchers of the University of Tartu Institute of Social Sciences helped the project reach the successful implementation of a secure computation system.