Uudised

On the 13th of October, along with the celebrations of the 385th birthday of the medical faculty, the Valda and Bernard Õun Scholarship will be awarded to Silva Kasela, a specialist at the Estonian Genome Center and a doctoral graduate of University of Tartu.

Since 1998, the International Summer University of the University of Tartu has introduced higher education and research in Estonia, incl. study opportunities at the University of Tartu, to participants from all over the world.

For the third year already, the Estonian Academy of Sciences organises the competition in which public university students explain their field of science in three minutes.

The European Commission decided to extend funding to the international joint master’s programme EACH – Excellence in Analytical Chemistry. The programme, coordinated by the University of Tartu, is running for the third year in cooperation with three more European universities.

The Times Higher Education (THE), arguably the world’s most influential compiler of university rankings, published the most recent ranking of the world’s best universities. In the 2018 rankings the University of Tartu continues to hold a place in the 301–350 band.

Opening ceremony of the new academic year starts on Monday, 4 September at 10:00 in the university assembly hall. Salutatory addresses are delivered by rector Volli Kalm and the mayor of Tartu Urmas Klaas. In the 2017/2018 academic year, nearly 4000 students start their studies in UT at all study levels.

As a result of a naming competition, the new academic and research building of the Institute of Computer Science, the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics and the School of Economics and Business Administration to be completed in autumn 2019, will be named Delta.

In a recently published article, Tartu scientists showed that unless an individual’s genetic descent is taken into account, his or her DNA-based estimation of disease risk may provide incorrect results. In the case of many complex diseases, for example the coronary heart disease and the type 2 diabetes, the disease risk is not affected by one or two, but thousands or even tens of thousands of gene markers available in the human hereditary substance, DNA. Each one of them has a relatively small effect if taken separately but the aggregate impact is considerable.

The admission period for most Estonian-language bachelor’s and master’s curricula in the University of Tartu ended last week. Application for English-taught curricula took place in spring. In total, the university received more than 12,100 applications for admission to Estonian and English curricula of all study levels.

On Sunday, November 9th at 11:30-19:00 at the UT Economics Faculty (Narva mnt 4-A314, Tartu) takes place University of Tartu Idea Lab "Idea Killing Sunday". What is happening? - Different tracks for newcomers, Vega teams, and active Tramm11 teams. - Meeting with mentors from different fields - Training and practice about building a minimum viable product: example of the landing page - Pitching competition

The European Union has emphasised that Europe needs new and geographically more dispersed centres of excellence in research. Proceeding from that, the UT, the TUT and the University of Edinburgh submitted a proposal to the European Union to create the IT competence centre in Estonia. The idea to create the centre of excellence was successful in the first round of the competition.

The new call for applications of the Vega fund of the SEB and UT Idea Lab is open until 1 March. This time, only development projects are supported. On 20 February at 14, an information event is held at the Idea Lab that gives an overview of the conditions of applying for the Vega fund development project support. So far, Vega fund has supported the development of eight prototypes: the first time with 14,300 euros and the second time with 22,900 euros.

On 9 March, the University of Tartu launched its MOOC “About Programming” that is very popular among learners. Together with the MOOC “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” that started last week, the free e-courses of the University of Tartu have attracted more than 1000 people from Estonia and 70 other countries. The leader of the first Estonian-language MOOC, lecturer of the Institute of Computer Science Eno Tõnisson said that as many as 650 people registered for the MOOC “About Programming” in only a couple of days.

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.

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.

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.

On 30 June, the inauguration ceremony where rector Professor Volli Kalm takes an oath of office for the new term as the rector will be held in the assembly hall of the University of Tartu.