The warm, sunny days of late August in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s “northern capital,” were made even brighter by the 2012 Microsoft Research Russian Summer School (opens in new tab). An annual Microsoft Research event, the Russian Summer School is intended for doctoral and master’s students, as well as young scientists. This year, the program focused on concurrency and parallelism in software, and featured lectures from eight of the world’s foremost experts in this field. The school was co-chaired by Judith Bishop (opens in new tab), the director of computer science at Microsoft Research, and Bertrand Meyer (opens in new tab), professor of software engineering at ETH Zurich and St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics, and Optics (ITMO).
2012 Microsoft Research Russian Summer School participants
This year’s Russian Summer School follows the highly successful past schools: Computer Vision School 2011 (opens in new tab), MIDAS 2010 (opens in new tab), and HPC 2009 (opens in new tab). It represents another of the many collaborative efforts between Microsoft Research Connections and the world’s top research professionals and institutions.
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The school provided the participating students with a unique opportunity to learn from top scientists in the field of concurrency and parallelism. Lectures covered the fundamentals of the field and explored the latest research topics. The school also provided a great venue for interpersonal networking, enabling the students to establish connections with one another and with the school lecturers. Students had Sunday free to explore the beautiful city of Saint Petersburg—referred to as “Venice of the North” because of its picturesque canals—and carry on individual work.
Competition for admission to the school was particularly intense. The number of registrations on the school website exceeded 600, and the overall acceptance rate was fewer than 10 percent. Most of the applicants were exceptionally strong, which made the decision process extremely difficult. The 60 admitted students came from 27 cities in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, and represented 47 academic institutions and companies. We are happy to report the continuing growth in the number of female students; women comprised more than 20 percent of this year’s class.
Students were excited in their praise of the school’s program, which they found professionally stimulating and personally rewarding. They, and we, are looking forward to the 2013 Russian Summer School in Moscow!
—Fabrizio Gagliardi (opens in new tab), Director, Microsoft Research Connections EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa)
Learn More
- 2012 Microsoft Research Russian Summer School (opens in new tab)
- Microsoft Research Connections, Europe and Russia (opens in new tab)
- Microsoft Research Connections, Africa and the Middle East (opens in new tab)