A student from St. Petersburg talks about the benefits of participating in the EuroChem Hackathon

In the summer, the CASE-IN International Engineering Championship was held under the auspices of The EuroChem 2024 MHC Hackathon is an All–Russian team competition for young specialists of the company and students of specialized universities and professional educational organizations.

The invitation also came to the Department of Inorganic Substances Technology of the St. Petersburg State Institute of Technology (Technical University), which cooperates with EuroChem.

Head of the Department Vyacheslav Nikolaevich Naraev invited the students to assemble a team. He became her captain. Denis Perepechin, a student of the Faculty of Chemistry of Substances and Materials (class 1033), the team included: Andrey Lukianenko, a student of the same faculty (class 1033) and Ilya Kaverzin, a student of the Faculty of Information Technology and Management (class 438). All team members are graduates of the Andrey Melnichenko Foundation.

Denis Perepechin: "We had to come up with a way to solve the problem existing in the production of potassium chloride, justify our choice and calculate the economic components of the project. Specifically, we were working on creating an automatic system capable of monitoring the presence of foreign objects on conveyor belts and removing them before they get into the mechanisms and can cause a malfunction in production. 

At the qualifying stage, we focused on the quality of the project and sacrificed a good presentation to submit the project for review. Initially, we did not expect to be able to compete with senior students, much less with young specialists, but unexpectedly we received high marks from the jury, with the exception of the presentation, which allowed us to advance to the second stage. It was held in person in Moscow. 

Over the course of three days, thanks to a number of events from the organizers, it was necessary to perfect their projects and prepare for their defense. We have significantly improved our project during this time and prepared for the defense, which resulted in us taking 3rd place, competing with masters, graduate students and employees of enterprises.
 We are very impressed with the last contest and want to participate again. We have gained experience in developing projects, optimizing their economic component, and rationalizing their implementation. We have also improved our teamwork and protection skills for similar projects."

EuroChem Hackathon 2024 is an all–Russian team competition for company specialists and students on relevant topics from the company. The championship is being implemented in accordance with the All-Russian Youth Action Plan aimed at popularizing the fuel and energy complex, energy conservation and engineering education.

The purpose of the Hackathon is to identify promising students of specialized universities and VET and invite them for an internship or employment in the company, as well as to develop young specialists of the company, gain new knowledge, approaches to solving cases, tools for developing their work and career path.

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