News

This week, the Digital Cleanup Week takes place at the university. Its aim is to declutter one’s personal or the unit’s digital life, and move in small but effective steps towards a greener university. The Digital CleanUp Week ends on 29 January, the nationwide Digital Cleanup Day.

Led by researchers of the University of Tartu, a pilot study has been conducted to assess whether gene donors’ awareness of their risk of cardiovascular disease changes their health behaviour for the better and thus reduces the likelihood of developing the disease. The study revealed that if family doctors use genetic data to provide risk-based counselling, regular intervention leads to the improvement of health parameters.

The first edition of the Delta X student competition initiated by the University of Tartu reaches its final on 27 January. From among nearly one hundred submitted solutions, the best will be decided in four categories. The Delta X competition aims to give secondary school and university students an opportunity to test their skills and apply their acquired knowledge in practice. There are four categories: robotics, digital solutions, business models and mathematics. More than one hundred students from all across Estonia will take part in the final.

From 2021, the University of Tartu is a member of the Europaeum association of leading universities in Europe. The association of eighteen universities aims to promote extensive academic collaboration and bring exceptionally talented young people together within an educational context.

On 20 October, the University of Tartu Institute of Mathematics and Statistics invites all to the Delta Centre to celebrate the World Statistics Day. The event will also be broadcast on UTTV.

The University of Tartu Centre for Ethics and School of Law participate in a new research project of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, which studies the social and psychological aspects of cybercrimes committed by children and adolescents.

On 17 and 18 August, the Institute of Education of the University of Tartu together with Riga Technical University and Utrecht University organises an online conference entitled “How to Re-imagine Teaching and Learning in Uncertain Times?”. It is open to everybody interested in new developments in educational technology and teaching in a world affected by COVID-19: parents, teachers, lecturers, researchers, politicians, technology entrepreneurs, etc.

On 15–19 June, the University of Tartu Institute of Physics will host an international online conference on teleparallel theories of gravity, where about 100 theoretical physicists and mathematicians from all continents have registered their interest to attend.

Due to the state of emergency declared by the government of Estonia, the University of Tartu cancels face-to-face classes from today to 1 May 2020. Instead, e-learning and other forms of distance learning will be used. Students who stay in residence halls are recommended to return home, if possible.

Researchers of the University of Tartu Faculty of Medicine are starting a new research project the results of which could lead to developing new biomarkers for drug addiction and open a new path in the treatment of drug addiction. According to the National Institute for Health Development, from 1999 to 2018, as many as 1.678 people died in Estonia as a result of a drug overdose. These deaths are overshadowed by the fact that there is currently no cure for addiction induced by psychostimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine.

We all like to stay home – but only if it’s our own choice, not imposed confinement. For many of us, forced home quarantine is today’s unfortunate reality. This can have negative psychological effects, which can be managed by being aware of potential stressors. All the following are natural and likely reactions to social isolation.

Today a student of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tartu was confirmed to have coronavirus disease COVID-19. The student took part in studies from Tuesday to Wednesday.

European Union funded ERA Chairs projects bring outstanding academics to universities and research institutions, while also implementing structural changes to achieve excellence on a sustainable basis. Estonia has been the country with the highest number of funded ERA Chair applications each year. What lies behind this success?

On Wednesday, 22 January at 16:15, Mark Fišel, Professor of Natural Language Processing at the University of Tartu’s Institute of Computer Science, will be delivering a lecture in the university assembly hall on natural language processing solutions that do not require annotated examples or linguistic knowledge encoding. Fišel, who compares his field of work to the search for a free lunch, has called his English-language lecture just that: ‘Free Lunch’.

The University of Tartu Futulab, a platform for mediation of internships, enables organisations and the university alumni to find motivated interns and employees from among more than 13,600 students.

The University of Tartu’s study on the prevalence of coronavirus reveals that the number of the infected has doubled in Estonia over the recent month. The virus is spreading in all counties. Compared to the survey stage that was conducted in December, people have started to travel much more extensively in Estonia. Also, there has been an increase in the number of people who do not change anything in their behaviour after possible contact with an infected person.

To date, none of the so-called British or South African coronavirus strains, presumably more rapidly spreading, have been detected in Estonia, as reveals the whole-genome analysis of coronavirus conducted in the project KoroGeno-EST-2 by medical researchers of the University of Tartu. There has been a lot a talk lately about several new and hypothetically even more infectious strains of SARS-CoV-2. The so-called South African and British strains have received the most attention and been associated with increased infection rates.

In the spring semester, the first expatriate Estonian visiting professor of the University of Tartu David Ilmar Lepasaar Beecher teaches a course on nations and empires in a globalising world. Registration to the course is open in the Study Information System until 7 February.

Researchers from seven countries, including Estonia, envision future reusable face masks to be based on smart nanotechnology. According to the plan, these 3D-printed masks will be more comfortable to wear, have excellent filtration efficiency, self-disinfection capacity and an integrated humidity dissipation system.

The University of Tartu Mentoring Programme is open for applications. The programme, created for the students and alumni of the University of Tartu, was first introduced in 2017 and is now for the first time also available for international students and alumni.