Ural Federal University: Disabled Student Presents His Own Business Project

On September 20-21, the UrFU Multifunctional Resource Center of Educational Activities hosted the qualifying round of the “Abilympics” national championship in professional skills for people with disabilities. The stage was organized by the Inclusive Education Center of the Academic Development Department of UrFU.

The stage was held in a mixed format: participants worked on-site to complete competitive tasks, while experts remotely monitored and supervised the participants’ actions. Based on the results of the qualifying stage, competitors will be selected to participate in the final competition season.

Boris Bredikhin, a Master’s student at the Ural Federal University, took part in the Students category. He presented a project on creation of an enterprise that would be able to develop and sell intrusion detection systems by network traffic in corporate networks of the customer. In April 2022 Boris took first place in the “Student” category at the regional stage of the Abilympcs championship.

“The previous days were very intense and exciting, especially for the students. First of all, the distance format is much more difficult than the face-to-face format: a huge number of people is watching you, and you cannot see their eyes nor their reactions. Secondly, the students were not allowed to use any notes or materials; they had to recreate their business plan from scratch in three hours from memory: to manage everything and not to miss anything important. We hope that the contestants will pass the qualifying stage and already in October will represent the Sverdlovsk Region at the national championship,” said Natalya Rudakova, Director of the Center for Inclusive Education.

For several years, UrFU has traditionally been the platform for competing in the “Entrepreneurship” competency among students and specialists with disabilities.