The new procedure for student performance assessment and earning credits comes into force from this semester as Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) is focusing on more objective student performance assessment and a fairer procedure of earning credits. On 7 February at 16:00, students are invited to meet the President of VGTU Student Representation Dominykas Tvaska. He will present the main changes in the procedure and will answer questions. The meeting is held in room SRA-I 03, VGTU Saulėtekis building, Saulėtekio av. 11.

On February 11th, 2019, the L’Oréal Foundation and UNESCO For Women in Science programme announced the list of International Rising Talents. The list features 15 most promising researchers, and among them is Dr Urtė Neniškytė, a neuroscientist at Vilnius University’s Life Sciences Centre (VU LSC).

This year, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) is organising the mathematical workshop for solving business and industry challenges for the third time. Although the format of applying mathematics to solve industry challenges is known around the world, the workshop organised by KTU is unique in the Baltic States.

Mathematical methods can offer solutions to various challenges in different fields of business and industry. Global companies, such as Philips, Orange, ING, different banks and other organisations turn to mathematicians in order to improve their processes, procedures and products.

“This workshop is, in a way, a good opportunity for academics to challenge themselves and to find possible solutions to industry and business problems”, says Dr Daniel Howard, the representative of Howard Science Limited, who participated in the mathematical workshop organised by KTU in 2018.

Among the companies who presented challenges for KTU mathematicians, last year was UADBB, AON Baltic, Finpass, DPD, SBA, Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken. Also, a number of foreign companies and universities – Oxford (UK), Belarussian State, Mashhad Ferdowsi (Iran), Oldenburg (Germany) – took part in the event.

During the workshop, solutions for the companies working in the fields of energy, production, electronics, environmental protection, finance, medicine were created.

Several mathematical models for big vehicle fleet insurance and contingency prediction were created for AON Baltic, the global provider of risk management, saving and health insurance professional services. Solving the challenge of SBA company group, the mathematicians were aiming to shorten the furniture production cycle by 10 per cent. This would allow to save working time and automatize production.

Also, during the workshop mathematical model allowing to improve predictions of the clients’ solvency was created for Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB Vilnius headquarters and a FinTech startup Finpass was recommended to use the algorithm, based on big data principles and allowing to evaluate sustainable income of mortgage applicants according to the recommendations of the Bank of Lithuania.

Dr Howard of Howard Science Limited believes that the solutions offered can open unexpected possibilities and avenues of thinking.

“The mathematicians used RStudio package, and this was the first time I heard about the software. Another discovery was to understand that some of the challenges were related to an immense amount of data. I have been working with data collection for many years, but I didn’t realise that the amount can be so enormous. I am talking about hundreds of millions of lines. I understood that people who are buying software may need the possibility to enter the millions of lines of data, and procedures, which would allow processing this data”, says Dr Howard.

KTU Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences is a member of The European Consortium of Mathematics in Industry since 2016. Since 2017, the Workshops organised at KTU are included into COST activity Mathematics for Industry Network, MI-NET.

The third workshop of Mathematical Solutions for Business and Industry will take place on June 10–14, 2019. For more information, please visit: https://mathworkshop.ktu.edu/

www.ktu.lt

On January 25 President of the Republic of Lithuania J.E Dalia Grybauskaitė attended the World Economic Forum, where she met with dr. Fabiola Gianotti, Director General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). During the meeting it was announced that Lithuania is going to host two CERN business incubation centers: one in Vilnius and another – in Kaunas.

If you want to gain even more international study experience, improve your foreign language skills, become a VMU Ambassador and a part of even bigger international community, participate in the competition and fill in the online application form until March 03 (23:59), 2019. For students from Music Academy application deadline is February 19 (23:59), 2019.

Jan. 29th, 2019, Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) Acting Rector Prof. Dr. Inga Žalėnienė met with the Korean Ambassador H.E. Mira Sun and diplomats of the Embassy.

“I like finance as it is not tied to any particular industry. You can apply your knowledge and skills in finance anywhere – be it banking, insurance, oil or any other industry”, says Hasan Aliyev from Azerbaijan, who is graduating from Accounting and Auditing study programme at School of Economics and Business, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) this year.

In order to strengthen cooperation between researchers, European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU) established joint research mobility fund, aimed at professional development, knowledge and good practice exchange in the context of high quality research in 2018. Eglė Butkevičienė and Lina Dagilienė, researchers from Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), were among the first to use the opportunity.

Lecturers of the Faculty of Medicine at Vilnius University (VU) learned about new ways to teach medicine. Prof Harm Peters, representative of Charite, Head of the Dieter Scheffner's Medical Training Centre (Germany) and Viktor Riklefs, vice-rector for studies at Karaganda State Medical University (Kazakhstan) came to Vilnius to share their knowledge and experience with the academic staff.

Jan. 24th, 2019, Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) Psychology student Sri Poojitha Vegesna from India graduated and is already packing her bags to take part in an Erasmus+ traineeship in Turkey.