News

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.

Skype Estonia and the University of Tartu explore the factors that hinder women entering into the fast developing ICT sector and what should be done that the situation would be different.

Approximately 70% more applications than last year were submitted to the curricula in English in the University of Tartu. Interest of Estonian applicants in curricula in foreign language increased more than three times. The most popular curricula among Estonians as well as foreigners were thouse of IT: Software Engineering and Computer Science.

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.

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.

At its meeting of 9 December, the UT strategy committee discussed the location of the future IT development centre. After thorough deliberation of the arguments, it was decided that the preferred location for the centre is the Narva maantee area near Oeconomicum, the academic building of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration. The choice was made between two remaining options—the university’s research campus in Maarjamõisa field and the Oeconomicum area on Narva maantee

Cybernetica AS has been awarded a contract with the United States Air Force Research Laboratory to contribute to the Brandeis privacy R&D programme of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The Novel Tools for Analyzing Privacy Leakages (NAPLES) project will be carried out by Cybernetica with the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Tartu as a subcontractor.

AS Eesti Telekom and the University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science have signed a cooperation agreement to promote the creation of new business ideas based on research and development work in the field of internet of things. For this, the students’ study environment and options will also be developed and in March the UT smart environment lab will be opened.

The University of Tartu has the largest number of graduates in Estonia—an estimated of 70 000 graduates. Aiming to bring the alumni community closer together, link them more to the university, develop mutual communication and professional cooperation, the University of Tartu launched a network for its alumni (www.utalumni.ee), novel in Estonia as well as Europe, the like of which is also used by the University of Oxford.

University of Tartu announced an architecture competition to find the best solution for the IT centre to be built on Narva Road. The city of Tartu decided to transfer the immovable property next to Oeconomicum to the university for building the centre. The centre will house the Institute of Computer Science, Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, and School of Economics and Business Administration. The building should be as energy efficient as possible.

On 8 February, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves awarded by way of exception two Young Scientist Awards. The prize was given to UT mycologist Leho Tedersoo and media and communication researcher Andra Siibak. Graduate of the Institute of Computer Science Dan Bogdanov was given the Young IT Scientist Award. Leho Tedersoo is Senior Research Fellow in Ecology of Biological Interactions at the University of Tartu. In a short period of time he has founded his own research group and become an internationally acknowledged mycologist.

On 5 July, the University of Tartu Art Museum exhibition “Dissecting a Painting. Portrait of G. F. Parrot” is opened in the rotund of the Old Anatomical Theatre. This is the first opportunity to see the portrait of the well-known rector and professor of physics of the University of Tartu, painted by Franz Gerhard von Kügelgen 200 years ago.

University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science opens a new position in autumn – the professorship of information systems. The new position will be held by current Professor of Software Engineering Marlon Dumas, who is ranked among the world’s top 1% of most cited researchers in the area of computer science.