News

On Gustavus Adolphus Day and the anniversary of founding the university, the ambassador of Sweden to Estonia, following the decision of His Majesty Carl XVI Gustav, gave the 1st class Order of the Polar Star to Tiina Mullamaa, teacher of Swedish of the University of Tartu.

On December 9th, at the University of Tartu’s initiative, the first international business festival sTARTUp Day 2016 will be held. Over 1,000 entrepreneurs, investors, students, and scientists will come together and more than 40 speakers will discuss successful business models.

With the help of the researchers of the University of Tartu, three thousand Estonians responding to the questionnaire will contribute to European Social Survey analysing the impacts of climate change risk. Researchers want to find out whether people’s behaviour and attitudes are influenced by awareness, resources or other factors.

On Monday, 7 November the Day of Gustavus Adolphus, the King of Sweden and the founder of the university of Tartu, and the 384th anniversary of founding the Academia Gustaviana is celebrated. Everyone interested is welcome!

On 28 October 2016 the senate of the University of Tartu appointed five nominees of the university as members to the council.

The University of Tartu School of Law started an important project, which aims to advance and promote the human rights knowledge and skills of Ukrainian students and academic staff in Ukrainian universities.

The University of Tartu Institute of Social Studies in cooperation with the UT Centre of Information Society organise the high-level interdisciplinary seminar “Age of information (overload)” on 4 November at 10:00. The seminar is free for everyone interested. At the seminar different aspects of the age of information are analysed and the topics of risks and opportunities involved in an information society are discussed. The speakers in the event are excellent and inspiring researchers who study the information society and its phenomena (e.g. social media).

A new open-access online course in environmental auditing will start on 31 October. The experience gained by the National Audit Office in recent years when leading international working groups has pointed out the need to harmonise the expertise of auditors who evaluate compliance with environmental protection requirements, good environmental practices and the principles of sustainable development.

Yesterday the University of Tartu and Tallinn University of Technology joined the US-based Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium. Thereby the expertise of the two leading universities of Estonia will reach the US Army who purchases innovative products and services through the consortium.

On 21 October 1983 the value of the speed of light 299 792 458 m/s was approved – and in honour of that event the day is celebrated as the International Day of Photonics. On that day the event will also be celebrated for the second time in Estonia: to everyone interested, the University of Tartu Institute of Physics will open its doors, show light experiments and introduce their recent achievements and developments in this field in Estonia.

On 21 October, the University of Tartu Department of Scandinavian Studies with its about a hundred alumni, students and professors will celebrate the 25th anniversary. On that day, the doors of the new lecture rooms and the library of the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures will be open and new research projects will be presented by international faculty members at a seminar. The event will end with a sing-along.

On 11 October, the meeting of the Investment Advisory Board of Kääriku Sports Centre formed an opinion that the Kääriku sports complex should become a unique smart centre of the future for the entire region, which provides innovative solutions from trainings to sports medicine.

On 8 October 2016 the ClimateLaunchpad finals took place in the Tallinn Creative Hub and the best European starting clean technology start-ups were awarded. The winner was the Estonian start-up Gleather which originates from UT and produces leather-like material from gelatine.

For the second time the Ministry of Education and Research presented the title Lecturer of the Year at the “Eestimaa õpib ja tänab” (“Estonia studies and expresses gratitude”) award gala and it was awarded to Lecturer at UT Institute of Computer Science Eno Tõnisson. The title was awarded for the first time last year when it also went to the University of Tartu.

The aim of the research work of doctoral student Anne-Mari Anton Willmore, who is conducting her research in the UT cancer biology research group, is to reduce the side-effects and dosage of cancer drugs. She received a 5,000 euro scholarship from the Valda and Bernard Õun memorial fund of the UT Foundation to work on her research and doctoral thesis.

From 9 to 12 October, an international environmental conference focusing on environmental sustainability will take place in Estonia for the first time. The topics include global climate change about which Estonia needs to be forward-looking and find ways to adapt with, for example, the average temperature increase. Speakers at the international environmental conference EcoBalt2016 session on adapting to climate change include among others UT Associate Professor of Environmental Health Hans Orru who will discuss the effects of climate change and the need to adapt.

Tartu’s university campus is unique in the world because Tartu and the University of Tartu are one of the most excellent examples of the formation of a university landscape in Europe in architectural as well as cultural sense. Accordingly, an international conference will take place at UT from 5 to 7 October which focuses on studying the university ensembles formed during the age of Enlightenment and the education of the time and formation of university landscapes.

On 3 October 2016 the Riigikogu elected Kersti Kaljulaid president of Estonia. 81 members of the Riigikogu voted for Kersti Kaljulaid. Kersti Kaljulaid has been chair of UT Council since 2011 until assuming the office of the president.

UT Rector’s Office, deans of faculties, vice deans and several heads of institutes will host the delegation of Uppsala University on 28 and 29 September. The aim of the meeting is to strengthen the relations between the two partner universities and meet the rector and administration of Uppsala University. UT Vice Rector for Development Erik Puura said that we can think of Uppsala University as our 155 years older brother and, naturally, bigger brother because it has more than 41,000 enrolled students.

UT Rector Volli Kalm and Vice Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven Danny Pieters have invited representatives of eleven Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Finnish and Belgian universities to the cooperation seminar “Internationalisation and language” at the University of Tartu today, on 21 September 2016, to discuss how to preserve national culture and native languages in an increasingly internationalised higher education sphere.