International Conference on Big Data and Machine Learning was held at ASU

28 April 2017 For Science Newspaper
International Student Conference on Big Data and Machine learning was held at Altai State University on 24–26 April 2017 in the framework of Youth Science Days.

The event appeared to be one of the most anticipated and trending IT events in Altai Krai. No such event has been conducted in the region and in the university before. The conference hosted students and lecturers of different universities and also everyone who was interested in information technologies. As the event was international, the participants included citizens of the United States of America, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. Moreover, the conference was visited by representatives of such major companies as Softline, Freematiq, Microsoft, IBM, Mail.Ru, Yandex and so on.

On 24 April 2017 the official opening of the conference was organized. Head of ASU IT Department Mikhail A. Ryazanov delivered an opening speech:

“Welcome to the International Conference on Big Data and Machine Learning! We are happy to have you here. We have been working on organization of this event for a long time. We hope that the conference will appear interesting, useful and informative to you.”

Vice Rector for Educational Work Evgeniy E. Shvakov also delivered the words of welcome. He noted that information technologies were one of the most promising and developing areas in the world, which meant that the students majoring in IT were our future.

“For the present day the development of any sphere of human activity is impossible without information technologies and support of IT specialists,” added Vice Rector. “This is why qualification improvement in this area is another step towards your professionalism. In this context, today’s conference is another stage in improvement of education quality in Altai Krai in general and Altai State University in particular. This event is of great significance, because graduates of our university or any other higher education establishment should be well-qualified to work under the new economic and technological conditions. I believe that you, as people of innovations, will be able to approve yourselves and learn something new. I hope that the event will be useful and fruitful for you. Good luck!”

After the opening part, the guests of the conference proceeded to the plenary session. Plenary reports were dedicated to big data and machine learning and were delivered by the leading scientists and specialists in this area. The presented information was relevant, interesting and debatable. Topics concerning the total surveillance, collection of information on people from difference countries and continents, full and partial robotic automation were the most burning. Discussion was unusual for such kind of events and lied more in the philosophic field.

Alexander Paladich, representative of Softline Company, with has established long-standing cooperative relations with Altai State University, presented report entitled “Digital Transformation” about the main trends in the development of information technologies. Director of Center for Smart Technologies under Novosibirsk State University Ruslan A. Permyakov told the audience how cognitive technologies affect life of society in the context of security. Mikhail Paison, Head Developer at Yandex Health, could not make it to the conference, but told the audience about big data in medicine via Skype. Representative of The Invaders project Ivan Grishkov dwelled upon modern technologies in management.

The second day was dedicated to big data processing. One of the most memorable reports was delivered by Dmitry Bugaichenko, lead analyst at Mail.Ru and Odnoklassniki. He demonstrated original methods of work with big data.

Student hackathon took place on the third day. It is safe to say that the hackathon at Altai State University was analogous to ML Boot Camp, popular IT contest. In the course of this unusual event, participants were solving practical problems and worked with big data in real-time mode.

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