News

At the Estonian Night of Museums “Waves in the Night” on 14 May, UT Museum, Art Museum, Old Observatory, Botanical Garden and Natural History Museum will also open their doors to visitors. Visitors can see permanent exhibitions and there is also an exciting special programme. At the Night of Museums at UT Museum waves of nearly all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum are present, because UT Museum, Art Museum and Old Observatory focus on some part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

The platform NomadCard by UT computer science students enables access to co-working spaces which can be used for remote working. This idea brought the bachelor’s students first place in this year’s final of the TransferWise Hacktathon, the topic of which was money without borders.

The university reputation survey by TNS Emor assured that, for already the eighth year, the most reputable university in Estonia is the University of Tartu. The recent survey outlines the attitudes of young people regarding UT: 15–19-year-olds, the current and future applicants, valued highly the university’s success and quality of education.

The Kick-Off Meeting of the Baltic Fracture Competence Centre (BFCC) took place on the 21st and 22nd of April in Hamburg. The BFCC is a Baltic Sea region-wide collaborative project which got awarded with €3.6 M from the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme last December. It will foster an international approach to face the challenges of fracture management. UT is represented by the research group of the Department of Traumatology and Orthopedics of the Faculty of Medicine's Institute of Clinical Medicine, led by Associate Professor Aare Märtson.

With the aim to develop Tartu’s university campus into an open, higher quality environment which supports innovation, the University of Tartu Department of Geography’s Mobility Lab uses smart phones and interviews to study how students, employees of the university and other creative establishments use the urban space in relation to the location of academic buildings or the workplace.

On Wednesday, 11 May Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, will visit Tartu and the University of Tartu as part of his official visit to Estonia. At 12:15 he will give a public lecture to all those interested on “The diplomatic activity of the Holy See at the service of peace”. Parolin will hold a mass in Tartu and meet Rector of the University of Tartu Professor Volli Kalm before the public lecture.

On 29 April 2016, UT senate elected the new director of the Youth Academy—Mihkel Kree, who has extensive experience as a participant, organiser and supervisor of Estonian teams in olympiads. Kree believes that in the future, the Youth Academy could also export its potential abroad and increase the proportion of different areas in the Youth Academy’s work. The new director takes office on 1 August 2016.

The delegation of the International Relations sector of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, will visit Estonia on 2 and 3 May to get information about the circle of industry, research and decision makers in Estonia and establish direct contact for possible accession talks. In order for Estonian enterprises to be internationally more competitive, they need to produce more high-technology products with high added value. High added value means bigger salaries, bigger investments and bigger profit.

The University of Tartu Museum takes visitors to a journey from the Arctic to the Middle East, from the islands in the Pacific Ocean to Africa, back in time into the Ancient Egypt and even into the depths of the Universe.

Wednesday, 27 April 2016 at Vilnius University is dedicated to the University of Tartu—the University of Tartu day is celebrated for the first time. On this day, UT is highlighted by public lectures and researchers and lecturers are discussing cooperation possibilities at faculty meetings. The Science Bus (Teadusbuss) has driven all the way from Tartu to greet the students of Vilnius University and introduce the options for research popularisation, information is also given on opportunities to study in Tartu.

Until the end of May 2016, the exhibition “Watt d’or” is displayed in the foyer of the UT Physicum (W. Ostwald 1). The exhibition introduces energy saving projects created and implemented in Switzerland. At the annual renowned “Watt d’or” competition, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy recognises the best innovations in five categories: society, energy technologies, renewable energy, energy-efficient mobility, and buildings and space.

On 28 April at 16 at the UT Centre of Educational Innovation (Lossi 38–229), lecture “Innovative Tool to Measure Analytics on Teaching & Learning Automatically, Objectively and in Real-Time” is held by Professor Izhar Haq of the University of Oxford who has worked in universities in Great Britain, Canada, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. To participate, please register by 27 April at lingid.ee/loeng_opianalyytika.

University of Tartu Rector Volli Kalm, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies and the Student Council invite you to show your support for tolerance on Tuesday, 26 April at 11:45 in the inner courtyard of UT main building. Opening words from the rector of the University of Tartu professor Volli Kalm and professor emeritus Rein Taagepera.

2,279 applications were submitted to the UT’s 19 English-taught bachelor’s and master’s curricula and the integrated curriculum of Medicine. Similarly to previous year, most applications were submitted for IT specialisations: the Computer Science programme received 242 applications from international candidates and 40 from Estonian candidates and the programme of Software Engineering had 277 and 41 applications respectively.

Estonia lacks researchers who work on legal problems in the field of finance on the presumed level of a research university. The European Banking Institute (EBI) supports the development of this field and experts in Estonia, because the network brings together the competence of institutions that study and carry out research on the problems of EU financial and supervisory authorities. Through the UT School of Law, the University of Tartu has been named a founding member and academic member of the EBI.

Researching and using natural resources is once again at the centre of attention, bringing plenty of information pollution and false information. UT development fund allocated 100,000 euros to the Earth Resources Centre (MAREK) of the Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences which has engaged researchers from different fields to clarify several questions related to Earth resources.

UT researchers Associate Professor Aleksei Kelli and Professor Kadri Ukrainski, together with partners from Ukraine, organised a seminar in Ukraine on 12 April entitled “Research Organizations and Universities Knowledge Transfer in Ukraine: The Improvement of the Policy and Mechanisms in Ukraine, based on EU Experience“.

At the conference “Fibre Optic Education”, organised by the Information Technology Foundation for Education last week, the University of Tartu Institute of Computer Science’s MOOC “About Programming” was awarded the title for the best e-course of the year. This course is also among the 31 which received the e-course quality mark this year.

On 15 and 16 April 2016, the administration of the University of Turku and representatives of the Turku University Foundation, led by Rector Professor Kalervo Väänänen, visited UT. On 15 April, the guests met with members of the UT Rector’s Office and in a seminar, Rector Volli Kalm provided an overview of the university, focusing mainly on the course of the structural reform and the university’s role in Estonian research and higher education.

On Monday, 18 April 2016, Rector of the University of Helsinki Professor Jukka Kola and Professor Markku Kulmala visited Tartu to make an interim report with leaders and researchers of the University of Tartu, Estonian University of Life Sciences and Tartu Observatory on cooperation in the framework of the Estonian research roadmap object “Estonian Environmental Observatory”.