Published on: 2026-08-18
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
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The on-site stage of the project intensive course “Island of Engineers” has concluded at the production site of the “Kronstadt” Engineering Center. The event was organized by the Advanced Engineering School of SPbPU “Digital Engineering” in cooperation with the Higher Engineering School “Kronstadt.” The culmination was a competition between 10 student teams who defended their projects before an expert committee. The SPbPU team included students from the Institute of Energy, the Physics and Mechanics Institute, and the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Materials, and Transport.
During two months of an intensive online program and the on-site part of the event, participants mastered the complete engineering cycle — from analyzing technical specifications and patent searches to manufacturing, testing a prototype, and defending their solution before experts.
The program was completed by 79 students and four mentors from 18 universities across 13 cities in Russia: Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Krasnodar, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Khanty-Mansiysk, Ufa, Samara, Kaliningrad, Murmansk, Ulyanovsk, and Kazan. Throughout the entire session, the intensive participants were accompanied by experts from the Higher School of Engineering.
The program was based on working on ten engineering cases proposed by industrial partners.
The SPbPU team — Daniil Khabarov and Vitaly Kulagin from the Institute of Energy, Olga Mochalova and Nikolay Paksyalin from PhysMech, and Kirill Sultanov from IMMiT — designed and built a test bench for 3D-printed parts of a screw compressor. The idea proposed by the students was new and unconventional for the industry — the developed test bench allowed testing the geometry of rotors and compression windows already at the design stage, as well as quickly testing several rotor design options before the part went into production. Thanks to the modular design of the test bench, replacing rotors and compression windows took minimal time, and the use of additive technologies to manufacture the rotors and casing in a dry screw compressor made it possible to create new parts faster than with standard manufacturing approaches.
The use of all the described solutions allows to reduce time and financial costs when designing new screw compressors, the team members noted.
As a result, the top three teams of the championship shared the prize fund of 950,000 rubles.
First place was awarded to the team from Tyumen State University and Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University “MITK-RK” with the project “Hybrid impeller: composite-metal architecture for high-pressure centrifugal compressors.”
In second place is the team from Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Ufa State Petroleum Technological University “Tempo and Precision” with the project “Intellectual filtration: a backwash device with automated regeneration for the process industry.”
Third place goes to the teams from Yugra State University (YUGU), Kazan National Research Technological University (KNRTU-KAI), Bauman State Technical University “Voenmekh”, and Ufa State Petroleum Technological University (UGNTU) “Kamenshchiki”, who proposed the project “Hermeticity Test Site: a Stand for Accelerated Resource Testing of Cuff Seals”.
Participant of “MITK-RK”, a student of the Advanced Engineering School of Tyumen State University, Kamil Ayupov, shared his impressions of the championship: All teams had different topics, and I think it was not easy to evaluate us. But my team and I believe we handled the task very well: we presented the project, did everything, and finished on time. I was very pleased to take part in such an event. I hope to be in Kronstadt more than once.
In addition to practical work on case studies, participants had the opportunity to meet with leading industry specialists: Anton Dumin, Head of the Department of Information Technologies, Automation, and Telecommunications at Gazprom Neft, gave a lecture titled “Sport as Personal Fuel for an IT Leader,” and Alexander Bulgakov, Head of Technical Policy Programs at Gazpromneft NTC, revealed the topic “From Oil and Gas Processing to ‘Blue’ Hydrogen: Designing Modern Facilities and Low-Carbon Business.”
The cultural and entertainment part of the intensive was also eventful. Participants visited Kronstadt, the Museum of Naval Glory, and the Naval Cathedral. The lead engineer of the Engineering Center “Center for Computer Engineering,” Mikhail Zhmaylo, held a team competition called the “Engineering Challenge” at the SPbPU School of New Physics, where the participants briefly took a break from their projects and demonstrated creativity, engineering knowledge, and ingenuity by building bridges out of paper.
At the end of the two-month training, participants of the intensive course and mentors received certificates of advanced training in the programs “Design Support for Technological Leadership” and “Modern Engineering Technologies: Mentor of Engineering Student Teams.”
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