8 April 2011

Robofest-2011 brought together over 250 school and university teams from over 40 regions of the country – and saw more than 2500 guests attend the event. The young scientists and inventors competed in amateur and professional robotics. The “creativity zone” showcased the team’s engineering projects – which were judged by a professional panel of judges by such criteria as originality, novelty and relevance.

The festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the fist manned space mission – and, fittingly, the festival’s participants were addressed by cosmonaut Dmitri Kondratyev, via a live feed from the Earth’s orbit. During the colorful opening ceremony the teams were also greeted by the director of Oleg Deripaska’s Volnoe Delo Foundation Tamara Rumyantseva, HR director at UC RUSAL Ekaterina Nikitina and the head of the “Robotics” program Alexei Kornilov.

At the press-conference following the festival the director of the National Trained Worker Support Foundation Irina Arjanova said: “We all understand that we must invest in higher education. And the interest large businesses show in this area is also quite clear. Simply because it directly concerns the young specialists that will soon be working at their production facilities. But Oleg Deripaska is doing something more – he’s investing in children, which is bigger, it’s something that allows us to see beyond the immediate future. It’s strategic thinking. These are investments into human resources and they are truly precious”.