Learning with passion

Competitions for young engineers

2026 will be a milestone year not only for JINR and the Ufa Scientific Centre that celebrate 70 and 35 years of activities, respectively, but also for several of their educational programmes.

The Dubna-2026 Technical Hackathon in Robotics will be held for the 10th time and the CyberDubna Open Robotics Tournament will be held for the 15th time. Both events are aimed at identifying and supporting children, teenagers and young adults with an interest in engineering and technical activities. The hackathon finals are scheduled for April 2026 and will be held as part of the CyberDubna tournament. The next Physics Days Festival is also scheduled for the same period.

The qualifying rounds for the team competitions for the Technical Hackathon and the Physics Days Festival began in October and November of this year. As per tradition, educational institutions from the Moscow Region partner with JINR.

The first qualifying round of the technical hackathon was held on 11-12 October. Ten teams (two people each) of students in grades 6-7 from Gymnasium No.3, School No.5, Lyceum No.6 and the V.G.Kadyshevsky Physics and Mathematics Lyceum took part.

On the first day, the participants learned the basics of 3D modeling and designed a housing for an autonomous object color detector (the best designs were printed on-site on 3D printers). Afterwards, they began learning the basics of Arduino.

On the second day, the teams continued to learn about Arduino, learned how to work with LEDs and photoresistors, as well as programmed and assembled an autonomous device for estimating the color of an object.

Based on the results of two days, the following teams were recognized as the best: Gymnasium No.3: Damir Sultanov and Emraan Kholmurodov (mentor: P.L.Luchinin), Elisey Masturov and Elisey Kiselev (backup: Dmitry Vorontsov, mentor: I.Ya.Masturov); School No.3: Pavel Borikov and Ivan Shulgin; Roman Ergin and Sergey Stepanov (mentor: A.A.Sokolov) and the joint team of Yury Gonshior and Vladislav Sokolov (Lyceum No.6 and V.G.Kadyshevsky Physics and Mathematics Lyceum; mentor: M.O.Pengrin). The winners were awarded with assembled devices as a gift from the organizers and will be invited to participate in the hackathon finals.

On 3 November, the first qualifying round of the new team competition for schoolchildren in the Moscow Region "Intellectual Marathon" was held. Six teams of fifth- and sixth-grade students from School No.1, Gymnasium No.3 and School No.5 participated. The participants had to visit six topical stations ("Puzzles", "Natural Sciences", "Engineering", "Logic and Computer Science", "Physics" and "Mathematics") and to complete five tasks of varying difficulty, each of which earned points. Before each station, the participants completed a short sports and entertainment challenge.

The team from Gymnasium No.3, consisting of Mikhail Ivanov, Sofia Kartasheva, Nikolay Kashirsky and Anna Rozova (mentor: M.S.Tokareva), won the overall fifth-grade competition. Among sixth-grade students, the team from Gymnasium No.3, consisting of Arina Vasilieva, Ilya Ignatiev, Timofey Kambalov and Valeria Starshova (mentor: M.V.Zubova), also won. Both teams qualified for the finals at the Physics Days Festival.

The organizers also recognized the team from School No.1, consisting of Rodion Gusev, Timon Pshets, Anastasia Fadeeva and Veronika Khridenko (mentor: E.V.Pshets) that took the second place overall among sixth-grade students.

The events were organized by the JINR University Centre, assisted by the young staff from various laboratories, the representatives from the D.I.Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia and the volunteers from Dubna educational institutions - the Polytechnic College, School No.5 and the V.G.Kadyshevsky Physics and Mathematics Lyceum.

It was not the first time School No.5 hospitably opened its doors to organize the event and the organizers express their sincere gratitude to the directorate and staff.

By the end of this year, similar events will be held at one or two more locations in Dubna and Serpukhov. Qualifying rounds are also scheduled for Dmitrov early next year. Following it, participants in the finals, scheduled for April 2026, will be selected.

UC Leading researcher Petr SHIRKOV