UrFU and SKB Kontur Projects Fill In IT Professionals Shortage in the Region

12:43, February 14, 2022

The university discussed the development of an IT competency acceleration project

The Ural Federal University and the largest federal IT developer Kontur will strengthen joint projects for training IT specialists for high-tech companies in the Urals. Victor Koksharov, Rector of the university, and Dmitry Mramorov, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SKB Kontur Group, agreed on it at the meeting about the organization of IT industry open days in Ekaterinburg.

Today more than 4,700 people are studying IT programs at UrFU. The university is the leader in the region based on the number of students in these fields. According to Victor Koksharov, in such conditions the university's key priority is active interaction with employers: the leading IT sector stakeholders in the region and the country.

"With one of the reliable partners of UrFU in this direction, Kontur, we are developing the IT competences acceleration project. The university specialists together with the company's experts have developed an effective educational model in the format of a public-private partnership, which will allow to train specialists with an advanced level of IT competences for high-tech sectors of the regional economy at an advanced pace," noted Koksharov.

IT Competencies Accelerator (ACSIT) is launched as part of the implementation of Kontur-Park, a large-scale investment project of SKB Kontur Group, which is planned to be completed by 2030. The platform for the digital transformation of the economy of the Urals macro-region will make it possible to train more than 5,000 people annually.

"ACSIT has two major advantages: accelerated training and no age restrictions for trainees. We will be able to train schoolchildren, students, and upgrade the qualifications of experienced specialists. The mission of the project is to combine theory with practical skills, for which there is a real demand from companies in the market today," emphasized Dmitry Mramorov.

Kontur supports talented students and their teachers: only last year it allocated more than 5 million rubles for cash prizes and valuable gifts to winners and prize-winners of the All-Russian Olympiads in Informatics and Mathematics.

The leading in the number of talented freshmen is the joint program of UrFU and Kontur "Fundamental Informatics and Information Technology". Over three years, 64 talented applicants - winners and prizewinners of all-Russian and international competitions in mathematics and computer science - have chosen this program.

The development of project-based learning and individualization of educational trajectories in IT programs is facilitated by the construction of a new world-class Ural Federal University campus in the Novokoltsovsky microdistrict.

"We will build an academic campus for the Engineering School of Information Technologies, Telecommunications and Control Systems at UrFU, which will make IT education more attractive to applicants. And most importantly, the infrastructural capabilities will allow us to increase the number of IT students and develop the most relevant IT research in partnership with leading companies," Koksharov said.

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office
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