JetBrains Department Opened at the Faculty of Computer Science
On April 12, JetBrains Department was opened at the Faculty of Computer Science with Aleksey Mitsyuk, Associate Professor of the Department of Software Engineering as its head. The Department is a part of the School of Software Engineering. It will support a new specialization "Analysis and Software Development Tools" for third and fourth-year bachelor students.
On April 12, JetBrains Department was opened at the Faculty of Computer Science with Aleksey Mitsyuk, Associate Professor of the Department of Software Engineering as its head. The Department is a part of the School of Software Engineering. It will support a new specialization "Analysis and Software Development Tools" for third and fourth-year bachelor students.
JetBrains is known to developers all over the world for its Integrated Development Environments (IDEs), tools for analyzing and optimizing code, and services for organizing teamwork. JetBrains has been participating in the development of the Faculty since its foundation: they conduct lectures and workshops, support teaching assistants, offer topics for project work and theses, take part in organising conferences. The concept of a dedicated department appeared after the creation of the Board of Trustees, of which Andrey Ivanov, JetBrains’s Senior Vice President for Investments, Research and Educational Projects, became a member. The Department was to be opened in 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic hindered it. However, the experience of remote work will help to attract the best specialists to deliver lectures and offer scientific supervision to all students of the Faculty.
JetBrains Department will support a new specialization "Analysis and Software Development Tools" for third and fourth-year bachelor students. This specialization will teach students how to create programs that help to make other programs. In addition, specialists from the company will be able to offer the students the tasks that require serious preparation and non-trivial solutions.
Andrey Ivanov, Senior Vice President for Investments, Research and Educational Projects, JetBrains:
Over the past seven years, the Faculty of Computer Science gained much popular approval among the best Russian students. We are pleased by the fact that that the Faculty is interested in the experience and competencies of JetBrains, and we will be happy to pass this experience on to the motivated students. Doing something together with people who have similar values and goals always gives us sincere pleasure.
I would like to note that the opening of the Department is not our first joint project. Ten years ago, we created a Computer Science Center together with Yandex, and since 2018, we have been supporting the St. Petersburg School of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science, of the St. Petersburg HSE University campus. I hope that the new JetBrains Department will be a bright and rewarding project.
Aleksey Mitsyuk, Associate Professor, Head of the JetBrains Department
Presently, I would like to note that we paid special attention to project work while developing the plan for the specialization. The idea is that all specialization courses should provide students with the necessary tools to solve project problems under the guidance of mentors from the JetBrains Research laboratories, because participation in project work makes learning both more useful and interesting for the student. In addition, we tried to look a little into tomorrow and offer students the knowledge that we think will be useful to them when they finish their studies at the university.
The plan for the near future is to recruit able and, most importantly, interested students for the specialization, which will start in the autumn of 2021, and to do interesting projects with them. I hope that the new base department will eventually become a widely recognized center in a field of modern software engineering techniques, including approaches that employ algorithms for data analysis, machine learning, modeling and process analysis. In addition, we will try to involve graduates of the Faculty in research and teaching both at JetBrains and at the Faculty.