7 projects reached semi-final in the SPbU Start-up — 2025 contest

During the pitch session teams presented their projects which they had been refining for a month alongside mentors who are representatives from the research and business communities, consulting firms, company executives and career accelerators. According to Anastasia Yarmosh, a member of the contest Expert Council and Senior Vice-Rector for Strategic Development and Partnership at St Petersburg University, cooperation with mentors provided budding entrepreneurs with the opportunity to quickly test the viability of the ideas they had at the earliest stages of the competition. Rapid feedback from the industry representatives, who are familiar with current technological and economic challenges, allows participants to adjust their financial models and marketing strategies or repackage their projects between the qualifying stages.

I’m impressed by the fact that SPbU Start-up participants’ coverage area expanded from St Petersburg to Siberia and Russian Far East. 

Anastasia Yarmosh, Senior Vice-Rector for Strategic Development and Partnership at SPbU

"It demonstrates us that the competition is of interest to students and young researchers literally across all corners of our diverse country. One can see how different technological, engineering and innovation standards and project management culture are among these incredibly diverse participants. Certainly, such participants’ kaleidoscope motivates us to move forward and think about what we can offer the young Russian start-up community next year, so they could continue to participate in our competition and further develop their ideas," noted Anastasia Yarmosh.

Elena Mishutina, Executive Director of the St Petersburg University Endowment Fund, Professor Sergey Aplonov, Director of the Arctic Research Centre at St Petersburg University, Alexander Sergeev, Director of the St Petersburg University Business Incubator and representatives of Russian major companies evaluated start-up projects. "I liked that the participants took their video pitches seriously and showed great creativity and energy. There were some very interesting presentations. During our previous meeting, we gave a few comments, and some teams took our recommendations on board and refined their projects. You can see them endeavouring to bring their ideas to life," noted Igor Redega, Director of the autonomous non-commercial organisation for international university cooperation "Ritsa".

After reviewing the participants presentations, the Expert Council selected 7 most promising projects to advance to the next stage of the SPbU Start-up — 2025 contest

The following projects have received a high praise: AI PotentialPro, which allows for the assessment and prediction of changes in the market value of young athletes; Antimicro, a software enabling researchers to validate whole-genome metagenomic sequencing data; Mentor AI, an intelligent assistant promoting responsible and conscientious use of artificial intelligence in education; and VARD, an AI-based space debris tracking system.

Alongside them, four more projects will compete for the victory including SIMON software, which will analyse traffic between devices and detect anomalies in the target network’s segment; Sonobact — an innovative method for optimising the production of Bacillus subtilis bacteria during the biomass accumulation phase; and the "Garden" mobile app designed for creating an interactive plan of a garden plot, maintaining a plant list, and planting schedule.

Among the members of the semi-finalist teams are students from SPbU, St Petersburg State Chemical and Pharmaceutical University, Sevastopol State University, St Petersburg State Marine Technical University, the National Research University "Higher School of Economics", the Bonch-Bruevich St Petersburg State University of Telecommunications, Peter the Great St Petersburg Polytechnic University and Omsk State Agrarian University named after P. Stolypin.

As remarked by Sergey Aplonov, Director of the Arctic Research Centre at St Petersburg University, who has been a member of the Start-up Expert Council since its launch, all projects in some way incorporate a technological component, and attempt to solve socially significant problems. 

"Overall, compared to previous years, there is a clear shift in the project subjects towards IT technologies, artificial intelligence, and its various applications, but the contestants have also presented projects in engineering and traditional academic fields. I would say that students keep up with the times," commented Sergey Aplonov.