Oleg Aleksandrovich, has the number of winners increased compared to previous competitions?
Oleg Baulin: Yes, the number of winners has increased significantly. In the previous, fourth round of the “Student Startup” competition, 16 startup projects of Ufa State Petroleum Technical University students received funding approval.
Which ideas did you find particularly interesting?
Oleg Baulin: If in the country as a whole the competition areas such as “Digital Technologies” and “Creative Industries” are leading, then in our university these are startup projects in the areas of “New Devices and Intelligent Production Systems”, “Biotechnology”, “New Materials and Chemical Technologies”.
It is difficult to single out any particular project, they all have a scientific research foundation. But we note that one of the strategic areas of USPTU under the Priority 2030 program is the project “Decarbonization Technologies” – student Liliya Tagirova won with the project “Creating a Brick from Hemp”. Another, quite serious project, which is being developed on the basis of scientific laboratories – “Development of a technology for synthesizing an electrolyte for a lithium-ion battery based on a solvate complex of lithium tetrachloroaluminate with sulfur dioxide”, the team leader is Dmitry Garipov.
Azamat Ilalov’s project “Creation of a new generation bridge crane” – the direction “New devices and intelligent production technologies” – can be separately noted. Azamat in the “Student Startup” continued the work that was started with an invention created within the framework of the grant of the “UMNIK” competition.
Students and postgraduates of the Institute of Business Ecosystems and Creative Industries and the Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering showed themselves in the nominations “Creative Industries” and “Digital Technologies”. Thus, future architect Luiza Arslanova won with the project “Production of paper from fallen leaves using recycled cardboard”. Arslan Faizullin proposed a startup project on “Digital Technologies” – “Creation of a web service in the field of improvement and landscaping of the territory with artificial intelligence for generative creation of landscape design”.
How does Ufa Oil Company support young people who are passionate about science and want to become entrepreneurs?
Oleg Baulin: We are conducting systematic work to involve students in technological entrepreneurship. The system is built according to the recommendations of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, described in the federal project “University Technological Entrepreneurship Platform”.
Junior bachelor’s students take one-day trainings in entrepreneurial competencies, where they can try on the role of an entrepreneur, inventor, investor, shareholder, engineer. The guys who show good results discover new abilities in themselves, then develop skills and generate ideas for startup projects in acceleration programs.
USPTU has been successfully implementing several acceleration programs for the third year, again within the framework of the University Technological Entrepreneurship Platform. Over the course of three months, students gain knowledge in the field of entrepreneurship, idea generation, marketing and economics, team building and management. They also work on their projects, consult with experts (trusted experts of the National Technological Initiative), and work with trackers. Trackers check weekly how the project is being worked on, identify bottlenecks and help find solutions to the problem.
Separately, we note the preparation of the final qualification work in the format “Startup as a Diploma”. Here, not only final-year students, but also teachers of graduating departments are involved in the field of technological entrepreneurship. Such a diploma is a business plan for a startup project, sufficiently developed, with analysis of competitors, the market, justification of the relevance of the project and a formed team.
Ufa Oil University is among the first universities in Russia to create startup studios. Therefore, our students, postgraduates and teachers can try themselves as a startup manager or a member of a startup team in the USPTU Startup Studio. Here you can generate and test the boldest ideas and hypotheses. At the moment, 16 legal entities – startup companies – have been registered with the help of the university Startup Studio. The startup teams include representatives of the leading universities of the republic. Joint developments and projects are carried out. This was significantly facilitated by the creation of the Inter-University Campus of the Eurasian REC of the world class. Joint events, meetings, demo days, conferences are held here – it is easy to show yourself and find like-minded people.
I would like to note that every year our university holds a competition of student leadership projects, which is very popular among students. The competition has a wide range of topics: there are startups, social and scientific projects. Its total budget is about 30 million rubles. The winners receive funding to implement their projects.
Photo: USPTU press service
Source: rg.ru
