Samsung IT Academy sums up the results of the 2021-2022 academic year

Samsung IT Academy is a social educational program, implemented as part of the Samsung Innovation Campus global initiative. This program has completed the academic year. About 500 students from 26 Russian universities became graduates in three tracks: «Mobile Development», «Internet of Things», and «Artificial Intelligence».

Students defend their graduation projects at Samsung IT Academy sites throughout Russia during the first two months of the summer. Students of the Mobile Development track presented mobile apps on Java and Kotlin. Those, who studied the Internet of Things, developed systems, that include a physical device or a set of devices. Students of the Artificial Intelligence track prepared neural networks solutions, trained on a prepared data set and built into an applied software system. In total 48% of students completed the Internet of Things track, 34% completed the Mobile Development track, and 18% completed the Artificial Intelligence track.

According to the Samsung IT Academy graduates’ opinion survey, the most significant component of the program was the experience of implementing real projects (77% of respondents). It was also important for them to conduct a public presentation (67%) and work in a team (51%). The courses were successfully integrated into the university curriculum: Samsung IT Academy helped 25% of respondents to choose the topic of their future bachelor’s work. The project also works to popularize relevant areas of the IT industry. Thus, 38% of respondents became interested in the chosen direction thanks to Samsung IT Academy. 84% would recommend the program to their friends and fellow students.

“Training of future programmers and IT professionals is one of the key social activities around the world in Samsung. Digital technologies are developing rapidly, and the developer needs to constantly acquire new theoretical knowledge and gain practical skills. Through the Samsung Innovation Campus educational projects, we aim to inspire students for continuous development and open up opportunities to turn their ideas into reality. I congratulate all graduates on the successful completion of the academic year,” commented Sergey Pevnev, Vice President of Samsung Electronics CIS HQ.

«Samsung IT Academy» is a long-term educational project of Samsung. It provides an opportunity for university students to gain practical knowledge in the most popular areas of information technology. Three educational tracks are being implemented: Internet of Things (since 2017), Artificial Intelligence, and Mobile Development (both since 2019). The unique courses of the Samsung IT Academy were developed by specialists from Samsung R&D Institute Russia and Samsung AI Center in Moscow. This year, the Mobile Development track introduced the opportunity to learn Kotlin. At the end of the year, 41 students were certified for this course, another 97 students studied Java.

By the end of the academic year, Samsung IT Academy graduates develop individual projects. In case of the program completion, they get a certificate from Samsung. Also, they participate in the annual interuniversity project contest, judged by a jury. This jury consists of Samsung experts and representatives of leading IT companies . Projects are evaluated by several criteria: idea, technical implementation, and presentation. In 2022, this contest will be held in the fall.

Open AI lectures continues at Samsung IT Academy. For now, there are 24 lectures from Samsung experts and guest speakers. On July 5-22, the Machine Learning Bootcamp was held. The bootcamp was an three-week online summer intensive, developed jointly with teachers from NRNU MEPhI. It includes the study of Python and libraries for working with data, the machine learning basics, and the solution and detailed analysis of practical cases on Kaggle, the main AI competition platform.

Samsung IT Academy won multiple awards and has been recognized by the professional community. So, in September 2020, the Academy educational program got the «Best Social Projects of Russia» award. In 2021, Samsung IT School and Samsung IT Academy received the Runet Award, the most prestigious Russian Internet award in the «Education and Human Resources» category.

Now Samsung IT Academy classes are conducted in 26 universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Irkutsk, Vladivostok, Kursk, Voronezh, Ufa, Izhevsk, Kaliningrad, Rostov-on-Don, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Sterlitamak, Ulyanovsk, Arkhangelsk. This year, the first graduation took place in VolGAU (Volgograd), FEFU (Vladivostok), IzhGTU (Izhevsk), MPEI (Moscow), PMGMU (Moscow), TPU (Tomsk), UlGTU (Ulyanovsk), BashGU (Ufa).