ISSC is the largest conference in Siberia for talented and ambitious students, graduate students, young scientists and schoolchildren. This year there were 33 sections and 125 subsections in which participants presented their reports. The Conference objectives are to increase student interest in seeking solutions to urgent problems in modern science and to promote the integration of higher education and fundamental science.
The ISSC-2018 organizing committee said that more than 3000 young people applied to participate in the conference. A council of scientific experts representing each of the Conference sections reviewed all applications. The experts, leading scientists, professors, and academics, assessed the scientific significance of the reports submitted, and the level of independence of their implementation and checked them for plagiarism. As a result, the organizing committee accepted 2,542 reports fr om 2,800 young people fr om Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, China, Latvia, and Korea. A large number of reports selected were from the Republic of Sakha.
This year the 33 sections included 29 for university students and 4 for schoolchildren, and the 125 sub sections included 114 for university students and 11 for schoolchildren. The sections with the most reports were: "Information Technology" (240), "Mathematics" (204) and "State and Law" (200). In addition, more than 170 reports were submitted for participation in the ISSC school sections.
Organizers emphasized the school sections so this year they were more successful than in previous years in relation to an increase in the number of participants and quality of the reports.
Dmitry Churkin, NSU Vice-Rector for Science, said,
We view ISSC as one opportunity to attract talented students to apply to NSU through the school sections, as well as attracting students for subsequent levels of study including Masters and postgraduate study. There has been a significant increase in the number of conference presentations from pupils at NSU’s Specialized Educational and Scientific Center and a notable improvement in the quality of their reports, including those focusing on engineering, for example, in robotics. The Conference is important to both our students and those who come from other institutions. It provides an excellent opportunity to establish scientific ties, make your first presentation at a scientific conference, practice writing a report and, possibly, decide on a topic for subsequent work.
This year, in addition to the main program, the Conference offered a large number of additional events. Participants could go on excursions to Technopark in Akademgorodok, SB RAS institutes, “Vektor” scientific center, and museums. They also took part in the game "What? Wh ere? When? “and the NSU Debate Club hosted a game wh ere participants analyzed scientific topics and learned how to convincingly present their point of view to an audience. Finally, Grigory Tarasevich, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the popular science magazine "Schrödinger’s Cat", gave a lecture on "The Lorentz Butterfly and Schrödinger’s Cat: Formats for Cooperation Between Media and Science".
