Convermax believes it’s important to give back to the community. Our CEO regularly participates in local IT events and competitions. Recently, he worked on the expert committee at the Youth Scientists and Innovators Competition “UMNIK” (an acronym that roughly translates as “Prodigy”). The contest supports young scientists with innovative ideas in their go-to-market efforts.

More than a hundred of young innovators from the south of Russia presented and defended their pilot projects in five sections: "Information Technologies," "Medicine and Health Saving Technologies," "Biotechnology," "New Devices and Intelligent Production Technologies," and "Resource-Saving Energy." Every speaker had five minutes to deliver a pitch and five additional minutes to answer the expert board’s questions.

Alex Sherbachev — who was the youngest member in the "Information Technologies" expert committee — noted: “Good event; lots of talented people and interesting projects in one place. Excellent networking.” He also mentioned that two projects in the neural networks field were excellent as ideas but that the contestants had issues with their marketing and business plans. The experts highlighted such projects as an autonomous low-power device capturing a depth of field via stereo vision, swarm coordination of UAVs for target search, and software for object detection and tracking in thermal and visual imaging ranges.

The experts passed the list of most promising endeavors to The Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises in Science and Technology. Even though we know the names on the shortlist, we can’t disclose them. The foundation will pick the final winners from this list and grant each scientist $8,000 in equity-free cash to grow their idea into a working business. The winners will be officially announced in February 2020.