South Ural State University has held a meeting of its leadership with representatives of Scientific Production Association “Bazalt”. As a result of the negotiations, the parties have agreed to develop their collaboration in the fields of science and education.
Scientific Production Association “Bazalt” is a defence-industry enterprise of the Russian Federation, which manufactures and supplies arms and munition for ground troops, air forces and naval forces. It is part of the Concern “Techmash” within the Rostec State Corporation.
According to the achieved agreements, SUSU students of the industry-specific programmes will be able to take internships at NPO “Bazalt” and obtain the experience of solving real production tasks. In addition, the enterprise experts will be engaged in the university’s educational process: they will participate in lectures, master classes and joint projects of the department, which is training the future specialists for this industry.
Deputy General Director for Research of AO “NPO “Bazalt”” Igor Zubarev noted the importance of the collaboration with the university:
“SUSU graduates successfully work at our enterprise and make a significant contribution into the scientific and production activity of our company. We are interested in the development of our collaboration, that is why the goal of our visit is to present the key directions of our activity before the university leaders, assess the scientific and education capacity of the university, and attract talented young people to the development of the products that our enterprise manufactures. Currently, the most promising directions include digitalization, robotic automation, and artificial intelligence. There is a great demand for it all at industrial enterprises. Everything related to computer vision or control systems, all of that are very promising fields of knowledge application for the production of military equipment.”
A special event during the meeting was the awarding of a team of SUSU students who had taken the second place in the hackathon organized by NPO “Bazalt” and aimed at solving a practical task relevant for design engineers. The company leaders awarded the students with certificates of appreciation and souvenirs and noted the high level of their training and out-of-the-box approach to task solving.
SUSU’s First Vice-Rector, Vice-Rector for Research Anton Korzhov stressed that this kind of interaction opens up new prospects for our university and its students:
“The enterprise leaders have paid a visit to our university in order to discuss our join plans on the implementation of educational projects, which are very much in demand in the industry. Our university promptly meets the requests by our industrial partners, which fact is confirmed by successful interaction with enterprises from the Chelyabinsk Region and other regions as well. SUSU is actively developing the academic programmes, which are required for the enterprises.”
The collaboration between SUSU and NPO “Bazalt” will become an important step towards the strengthening of the science-and-education potential of our university and will allow to improve the training of specialists who are in-demand at the enterprises of the defence industry complex.