News

On 20 October, His Excellency the Ambassador of Austria, Mr Peter Mikl, paid his first visit to the University of Tartu and met with the rector.

Risto Näätänen, Professor emeritus of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Tartu, passed away on 5 October.

This summer, the university announced an architectural competition to find a design for constructing an academic and research building and landscaping the surrounding area at Maarjavälja. On 19 October, the procurement committee opened the ten entries submitted to the competition.

The full programme of Tartu 2024 is announced on 19 October, exactly one hundred days before the beginning of the year of the European Capital of Culture. The University of Tartu supports the activities of the Capital of Culture and the programme includes various events organised by the university.

On 18 October, the new Ambassador of Ukraine Maksym Kononenko visited the University of Tartu and met with the rector to discuss cooperation between the University of Tartu and Ukrainian universities.

The idea competition aims to find the best solution for reconstructing the academic building at Kaarli pst 3 and the design for the yard area.

On 9 October, ESTCube-2, the satellite developed by Estonian students, finally launched on board the Vega launcher of Arianespace. However, according to current information, the satellite most likely never separated from the launch pod in the nose of the rocket.

A recently published Open Science Toolkit developed within the ENLIGHT RISE project aims to help and support researchers in their work.

At the senate meeting on 25 August, the senate decided to propose to the Government of the Republic to remove Mari Moora from the University of Tartu council due to her appointment as Vice Rector for Research and to appoint Associate Professor in Animal Ecology Tuul Sepp as member of the council. The government accepted the motion at their session on 12 October.

The third ENLIGHT Teaching and Learning Conference took place at the University of Bordeaux from 11 to 13 October 2023. The focus of the conference was on empowering students.

On Friday, 13 October, leaders of the University of Tartu and the city of Tartu met in the university’s main building to discuss the topics in which the university and the city can support each other’s development. Based on the agreements reached at the meeting, the university and city cooperation agreement will be renewed.

The group of investors led by Specialist VC and UniTartu Ventures have invested €380,000 in Gearbox Biosciences, a company founded by researchers. With grants, the total funding amounts to over half a million euros.

The Police and Border Guard announced at 9:15 that dozens of Estonian institutions, including schools and kindergartens, received a bomb threat by email in Russian tonight.

Rector Toomas Asser, invited by the European Commission, took part in the European Week of Regions and Cities, the largest annual event on cohesion policy. On 10 October, Asser was one of the speakers in the high-level thematic session, "Retaining talent for regional growth".

As part of the Ida-Viru County Entrepreneurship Week, on 6 October, Narva College hosted an idea competition for young people to come up with ideas for implementing the green transition. The best idea was that of the students of Narva Upper Secondary School: using textile waste from the sewing industry to make toys for pets.

The University of Bordeaux is organising virtual intercultural exchanges, which are aimed to promote the participants’ communication skills and are open to students of all the ENLIGHT universities.

The language advisor welcomes students of all curricula of the University of Tartu whose mother tongue is other than Estonian and who need help and advice in writing academic texts in Estonian.

On 13 October at 15, the city of Tartu will open a memorial to Konstantin Konik, a statesman and a long-time employee of the University of Tartu, near the University of Tartu Library.

On 9 October, Rector Toomas Asser, Vice Rector for Development Tõnu Esko and Vice Rector for Research Mari Moora met with Minister of Climate Kristen Michal and his Science Adviser Aveliina Helm in Tallinn to discuss opportunities for cooperation, funding for sustainability-related research projects and ensuring the involvement of university researchers in the development of the Climate Act.

At the national Teacher of the Year Gala on 7 October, the winners of the Teacher of the Year awards were announced, and three educator’s lifetime achievement awards were presented. Two of the three lifetime achievement awards went to University of Tartu professors emeriti.