1-Million-Ruble Grants Wins For ITMO Students
The Russian Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises has awarded grants of 1 million rubles to 25 ITMO students who were chosen as winners of the contest Student Startup.
Students from ITMO University presented their projects across various categories. 12 of them excelled in the category Digital Technologies. Three of the students were named best in New Devices and Intelligent Production Technologies and two more – in Creative Industries. And seven of the winners competed and won in such categories as New Materials and Chemical Technologies, Biotechnologies, and Medicine and Health Protection Technologies. Lastly, a student from ITMO’s Faculty of Secure Information Technologies became number one in Energy-Saving Technologies.
Startups
One of the winning projects was developed by Yaroslav Prikazchikov, a mentor, business tracker, and student at ITMO’s Faculty of Technological Management and Innovations (FTMI). His platform TrendScout aggregates the websites of the most promising startups across the globe, providing a detailed analysis of the current trends and competitors for entrepreneurs.
Alexander Dupak, who is also an FTMI student as well as one of the first winners of the ITMO.STARS contest, designed – a Telegram bot that aggregates information from various Telegram channels and VK groups into an event digest. Daniel Seidov, a student at ITMO’s Institute of Applied Computer Science, has been working on a web app for online stores, which helps owners find warehouses and solve logistics issues, since 2020.
The contest saw not one, but several projects on novel materials, such as spider silk-based materials for regenerative medicine, submitted by the team of the startup SilkIns headed by Daudi Dauddin, and eco-friendly alternatives to leather and fabrics made of kombucha waste by FTMI student Aleksey Filonov.
About the contest
Student Startup is a grant program organized by the Russian Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises as part of the federal project Platform of University Technology Entrepreneurship. The competition is open to Bachelor’s, Specialist’s, Master’s, and PhD students of Russian universities who are engaged in the development of innovative products and technologies. Each winner receives a one-year grant of 1 million rubles to develop their startup or commercially viable research project.
The project has been running for two years, with 1,000 grant holders chosen in 2022 and 1,235 in 2023. Among this year’s winners are 25 students from ITMO University, including 5 participants of ITMO Accelerator. Overall, the contest welcomed students from 236 universities in 68 regions of Russia, with the top projects submitted by participants from Moscow, Tatarstan, and St. Petersburg.