This became possible thanks to their successful performance at the annual CASE-IN engineering championship in the “Digital Atom” field.
Last summer, about 2.5 thousand students of Mining University underwent internships at partner companies. These included PhosAgro, Gazprom, Rosneft, SUEK, and many others. This year’s special feature was an internship at Rosatom’s facilities. In this way, the state corporation celebrated the success of two university teams who won prizes in the CASE-IN engineering competition in the field of the digital atom.
This year the students of Mining University tried their hand at creating digital technologies for the nuclear industry for the first time and were immediately ranked among the best in Russia, which gave them the opportunity to go on a technical tour to the Kola Peninsula. It was the formation of a cross-functional team with various competencies, as Yury Zhukovsky, director of the Digital Technology Education and Research Center, noted, that allowed the contestants to succeed in the Digital Atom area and acquire new professional skills.
The development of programs for the nuclear power plant lasted more than six months. It was necessary to create various IT mechanisms allowing new Rosatom employees to adapt to the enterprise. The developments proposed by the students of Mining University were highly appreciated by the heads of structural divisions and HR departments of the holding. The contestants developed websites and applications to integrate employees into an unfamiliar environment and even used virtual reality to simulate the space of a nuclear power plant.
“This is not the first time students of the University of Mining have taken part in CASE-IN competition, but it was the first time they tried their hand at creating digital technologies. The thing is that it is not enough to have knowledge in programming or understand the structure of "Rosatom", a symbiosis of competencies is needed here. The university has all the necessary infrastructure for this. For example, at the Digital Technology and Digital Simulation Centers, our students can obtain additional knowledge in their area of interests free of charge,” said Yury Zhukovsky, Director of the Educational and Scientific Center of Digital Technologies at the Mining University.
The internship, during which students toured Kola NPP, the Radioactive Waste Management Center, the nuclear icebreaker fleet, the Maritime Operations Center, and the first nuclear icebreaker Lenin, lasted three days.
“The tour of Rostatom's facilities was introductory, but it was very interesting. We were convinced of the great prospects of nuclear power and that it will remain an integral part of the global fuel and energy complex in the future,” said Antonina Stoyanova, a 2nd year master's degree student of ISTM-20.
In addition, the students of Mining University learned that Rosatom has not yet used the digital programs developed for the competition to adapt the employees of the nuclear industry, and today the state corporation is interested in such ideas.