News

Jan Richard Bærug, who recently defended his PhD at the University of Tartu, analysed the attitude of 691 newspapers and niche magazines of northern Europe to the merging of journalism and advertising. He found that three quarters of all analysed publications agreed to publish unlabelled marketing texts. According to Bærug, such hybridisation of journalism is a problem as it may weaken democracy.

From 7 to 14 July, academic staff and doctoral students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and North India participate in the University of Tartu summer school. At the summer school in Tartu, participants learn about new research methods in environmental health and epidemiology, which they can use to conduct similar studies in their home universities.

On 29 June, the IT executives of Swedbank Group visited the University of Tartu to discuss cooperation opportunities and share information about the future plans of the bank and the university. Last Thursday, on 29 June, the top IT executives of Swedbank Group led by Head of Group IT Anders Ekedahl met the rector and vice rectors of the University of Tartu and lecturer of information systems Fredrik Payman Milani to discuss cooperation, each other’s interests and plans for the future.

The master’s thesis by Annika Liivamägi, a graduate of Service Design and Management in the University of Tartu Pärnu College, explains that customers who leave the online shop before completing their purchase are not necessarily a problem for the retailer but may involve a positive opportunity instead.

In a recently published article, Tartu scientists showed that unless an individual’s genetic descent is taken into account, his or her DNA-based estimation of disease risk may provide incorrect results. In the case of many complex diseases, for example the coronary heart disease and the type 2 diabetes, the disease risk is not affected by one or two, but thousands or even tens of thousands of gene markers available in the human hereditary substance, DNA. Each one of them has a relatively small effect if taken separately but the aggregate impact is considerable.

The admission period for most Estonian-language bachelor’s and master’s curricula in the University of Tartu ended last week. Application for English-taught curricula took place in spring. In total, the university received more than 12,100 applications for admission to Estonian and English curricula of all study levels.

On Sunday, November 9th at 11:30-19:00 at the UT Economics Faculty (Narva mnt 4-A314, Tartu) takes place University of Tartu Idea Lab "Idea Killing Sunday". What is happening? - Different tracks for newcomers, Vega teams, and active Tramm11 teams. - Meeting with mentors from different fields - Training and practice about building a minimum viable product: example of the landing page - Pitching competition

Konstantin Tretjakov, Research Fellow in Bioinformatics at the University of Tartu, won the third place at the international competition of big data analytics TEXATA among more than 2000 competitors.

Erasmus exchange students of the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu have demonstrated that it is possible to fully take over the control of commercial drones. Weak drone security leads to cyber attack opportunities against drones.

The European Union has emphasised that Europe needs new and geographically more dispersed centres of excellence in research. Proceeding from that, the UT, the TUT and the University of Edinburgh submitted a proposal to the European Union to create the IT competence centre in Estonia. The idea to create the centre of excellence was successful in the first round of the competition.

The new call for applications of the Vega fund of the SEB and UT Idea Lab is open until 1 March. This time, only development projects are supported. On 20 February at 14, an information event is held at the Idea Lab that gives an overview of the conditions of applying for the Vega fund development project support. So far, Vega fund has supported the development of eight prototypes: the first time with 14,300 euros and the second time with 22,900 euros.

In Estonia, the public and private sector have databases the merging and analysis of which could help the state and enterprises make better management decisions. However, such consolidation of data would be a serious threat to privacy and violate data protection rules.

On 9 March, the University of Tartu launched its MOOC “About Programming” that is very popular among learners. Together with the MOOC “Estimation of Measurement Uncertainty in Chemical Analysis” that started last week, the free e-courses of the University of Tartu have attracted more than 1000 people from Estonia and 70 other countries. The leader of the first Estonian-language MOOC, lecturer of the Institute of Computer Science Eno Tõnisson said that as many as 650 people registered for the MOOC “About Programming” in only a couple of days.

From 8 to 15 March, students of Marymount University participate in the international continuing education programme on cyber security at the University of Tartu. Participants of the programme visit the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia as well as Skype, Microsoft and other enterprises in Estonia and Finland. The 24 students participating in the programme come from various countries, including the USA, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Barbados, India and Ethiopia.

Skype Estonia and the University of Tartu explore the factors that hinder women entering into the fast developing ICT sector and what should be done that the situation would be different.

Approximately 70% more applications than last year were submitted to the curricula in English in the University of Tartu. Interest of Estonian applicants in curricula in foreign language increased more than three times. The most popular curricula among Estonians as well as foreigners were thouse of IT: Software Engineering and Computer Science.

On 19 May, a seminar on intellectual property (IP) in software development will be held at the University of Tartu main building, Ülikooli 18-232.

The European life-science infrastructure for biological information ELIXIR has been awarded €19 million from the EU to accelerate the implementation of Europe’s life‑science data infrastructure over the next four years. The University of Tartu is the only partner in ELIXIR from Estonia.

A report was published which evaluates ICT related research activity in Estonian research institutions. The University of Tartu was given the highest grade in the ICT domain. The main recommendations were to develop international recruitment and ICT infrastructure.

Starting from the next academic year, the stipends allocated to the students of programmes in Computer Science will increase to motivate students to study full time in the areas of priority for Estonia. For the first time, nearly half the IT students will receive the stipend.