Samsung Innovation Campus announced the winners of the annual Mobile App Development Contest «IT School chooses the strongest!» 2023

The final round of the annual mobile app development contest «IT School chooses the strongest!» was held online on July 5-6, 2023. All graduates of the Samsung IT School for the 2022/2023 academic year took part in the selection for the final round, with students from Armenia joining them for the first time this year. The contestants presented mobile applications for Android, which they developed during the year of study.

In 2023, more than 500 schoolchildren became graduates of the program. The results of the academic year were summarized at 57 Samsung IT School sites operating in Russia and Armenia. During the 1st year of training, each student mastered 5 modules of the program and developed an individual project — a mobile application for Android. The students determined the project ideas on their own.

The contest was held in three categories: «Social Applications», «Games», and «Programming». 56 mobile applications by 65 graduates from Russian and Armenian cities, 22 cities in total, made it to the second round of the contest. The jury, which included Samsung experts, teachers, and graduates of the Samsung IT School, selected the 19 best projects for the finals. These projects were developed by graduates from 7 cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novorossiysk, Omsk, Tomsk, and Dilijan.

The jury of the All-Russian contest «IT School Chooses the Strongest!» was headed by Albert Minniyarov, Head of the Quality Innovation Team, Samsung. The final jury was also attended by: Sergey Pevnev, Vice-President of Samsung Electronics headquarters in the CIS; Svetlana Yun, Andrey Limasov, Anton Zhukov, Andrey Skripkin, Samsung experts; Olga Maksimenkova, Associate Professor of Software Engineering Department, Faculty of Computer Science, HSE; Viktor Vikhrov, Head of the Yandex Go development group; Artem Rudakovsky, Head of Yandex.Lyceum Technical Development Group; Yuri Sazankov, Pyaterochka (X5 Group) application developer; Mikhail Baburin, senior product manager at INPAS (Russian IT company); Dmitry Gushel, Android developer, Tinkoff Bank; Irina Efremova and Vladimir Shperling, teachers and graduates of the Samsung IT School.

«This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Samsung IT School in Russia. This program became one of the first examples of successful implementation of the company’s global social and educational initiative — Samsung Innovation Campus to train future IT specialists. Over the past 10 years, the program has covered about 50 cities in Russia, and IT programs for university students have appeared. Joint centers of competence in the most advanced IT areas have been established in 30 leading universities in the country. Today, the Samsung Innovation Campus IT education program for young people is actively developing in more than 30 countries. Last year Armenia joined the program. The program was launched at UWC Dilijan College. Thanks to joint efforts, active participation, and support of the project development by the college management, professionalism of teachers, and all the staff involved in the project, the graduates of the program from Armenia developed successful projects and won prizes in the finals of the contest in all three categories. Since 2014, more than 5200 graduates have completed our educational program. According to the results of surveys, 97% of graduates recommend training at Samsung IT School to their friends, and 95% of them plan to continue their further development in IT,» said Sergey Pevnev, Vice President of Samsung Electronics CIS headquarters.

«The Samsung IT School program is unique, it promotes the development of talents and skills of young people who will contribute to the development of Russia and other countries. When Ruben Vardanyan and I decided to establish the UWC Dilijan College in Armenia, we hoped that it would become a catalyst for the development of both Dilijan and the education system in the country. We are happy that Samsung is implementing its program in Armenia based on the UWC Dilijan College — we see the synergy of different educational initiatives and the effect it has on Armenian youth. Children from Armenia made it to the finals of the competition, and this makes us proud and happy for the achievements of our students. I can confidently say that our cooperation with Samsung has opened new opportunities for Armenia’s development,» said Veronica Zonabend, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the UWC Dilijan College, and founder of sustainable development charity projects in Russia and Armenia.

«Thank you to the contest participants and their teachers. You have done a tremendous amount of work, from the conception and architecture of applications to their presentations and defense. It is noteworthy that the creators of the projects, despite their school age, look far into the future and are going to develop and refine them,» said Albert Minniyarov, Chairman of the Jury, Head of the Quality Innovation Team, Samsung.

«It is impressive that the works were not performed as final training projects, but as cases with specific goals. Success to our students!» said Efremova Irina, additional education teacher, and teacher of Samsung IT School in IT-Cube.Miass in the house of children’s creativity «Yunost» named after V.P. Makeev.

«I would like to note that in each project I saw interesting thoughts, I would gladly use the applications created by students», said Vladimir Shperling, Android developer in Yandex Market, graduate and teacher of Samsung IT School in the Engineering Lyceum of leading universities.

The Grand Prix award went to Sofya Tkach for developing Dovery, an app for parents that helps to schedule and distribute errands among all family members. The teacher is Ivan Murzin.

In the category «Game Application» the winners were:

1st place — Emma Manukyan from Dilijan, UWC Dilijan College, with «LightBrains» application for developing children’s intelligence through mental arithmetic. Teacher — Davtyan Arsen.

2nd place — Polina Mikhailova and Maria Lukashenko from Omsk, School No. 120, with «Incredible Volleyball», a two-person game in which everyone tries to throw the ball to the opponent’s side. Teacher — Shelikhov Oleg.

3rd place — Vitaly Kozachenko from Kazan, the Specialized Training and Research Center of KFU, with the game «ITL: Final Trial», where his school is humorously reflected in the game world: to pass the locations you need to perform a series of tasks like in the games of the 90s. Teacher — Bulat Fakhrutdinov.

Winners in the «Social Application» category:

1st place — Maxim Yasashny from Moscow, RTU MIREA, with «Where is Caesar», an app for real gourmets with a system for evaluating restaurants by specific dishes. Teacher — Fedor Sedov.

2nd place — Grigory Omelchuk and Alexander Kulagin from Moscow, Samsung Technical Education Center, with the application «Pokupai — Pomogai» to participate in social and charitable initiatives based on «Pyaterochka» stores. Teacher — Dmitry Egorov.

3rd place — Gagik Sargsyan from Dilijan, UWC Dilijan College, with the universal application «Traveler», where you can share and learn information about different places and events on an interactive map while traveling. Teacher — Davtyan Arsen.

The winners in the “Programming” category were:

1st place — Mikhail Shumilov from Moscow, Samsung Technical Education Center, with the application «Fields», which will make walking fun with the ability to compete and record walking in the form of patterns. Teacher — Nepretimov Alexander.

2nd place — Yaroslav Zhukov from St. Petersburg Palace of Youth Creativity with «ForBlitzStatistics» application, designed for keeping competitive statistics on tank battles in the famous game. Teacher — Georgy Semenov.

3rd place — Artyom Jangiryan from Dilijan, UWC Dilijan College, with «ArFinance» application, where modern technologies for financial management are used. Teacher — Gardchian Henrik.

According to the results of online voting Sergey Zhukov from Tomsk Hobby Center won the special category «Viewers’ Choice» with the «Train Your Body» application for those who do fitness on their own. The app helps not only to enter your workout programs but can also suggest workouts generated by the artificial intelligence GPT3.5-Turbo. The teacher is Igor Efimov.

The winner in the «Partner of the Year» category for the 2022/2023 academic year was the Engineering Lyceum of NSTU. In this nomination, since 2020, special achievements of educational organizations, based on which Samsung IT School is implemented, have been marked.

«Samsung IT School» is a federal social and educational program to train future IT specialists, which is part of the Samsung Innovation Campus global initiative. Students of the program, who are schoolchildren of 9-10 grades receive knowledge and practical skills in developing mobile applications in Java for Android. Since the program’s existence, about 5000 graduates have been awarded company certificates. The course is free and is designed for one academic year (132 academic hours): four academic hours of group classes with a teacher per week. Classes are conducted in the format of additional education. Graduation projects of all graduates participate in the annual federal contest of mobile applications «IT School chooses the strongest!». A graduate certificate and a diploma of the winner of this competition gives students additional points when entering Russian universities.