On May 27, 2026, the Faculty of Artificial Intelligence of Lomonosov Moscow State University hosted a reporting conference of the Intellect Foundation's Design Laboratory, which summed up the results of the first stream of the program, which started on March 2, 2026. In three months, 65 students and postgraduates, united in 16 teams, developed 16 practical cases commissioned by 10 partner companies. The work was carried out in three key areas: machine vision, predictive models, and process automation.
"I liked the large selection of projects with a wide range of topics: you could choose the most interesting case for yourself, focusing either on the case holder company or on the skills you wanted to develop. I would like to mention networking separately. During three large meetings, we managed to get to know not only interesting peers, but also business representatives. In particular, we managed to find points of mutual interest with companies and discuss the launch of pilot projects," said Semyon Zarutsky, a student at the Moscow State University Faculty of Physics and a member of the team that solved the case of "AI assistant for creating meeting protocols."
The Project Laboratory of the Intellect Foundation unites students, postgraduates and the industry to work together on applied tasks in the field of artificial intelligence. Program participants solve real-world company cases under the guidance of industry experts. This format allows young researchers not only to deepen their professional competencies, but also to gain practical experience in developing solutions that are in demand in various sectors of the economy. Work on projects is carried out in small teams, which contributes to the development of collective development skills and effective interaction in an interdisciplinary environment.
Among the customers are leading Russian companies from various industries: mining and aluminum industry, fuel and energy complex, construction industry, agro-industrial sector, aviation, information technology, industrial training and specialized design organizations. Each of the 16 teams worked on a specific production task, the data in most cases was provided by the customer, and industry representatives acted as mentors to the project teams. In their reporting presentations, the teams paid special attention to the economic effects that can be achieved by integrating project results into production and business processes: in some cases, this will allow companies to reduce costs by several tens of millions of rubles per year.
"The project laboratory of the Intellect Foundation acts as an institutional intermediary between academic science and business, capable of speaking both the language of scientists and the language of measurable results. Today, the teams presented not educational projects, but viable MVPs, and in some cases, ready–made solutions with clear implementation effects and opportunities for further development. The key principle of the program is that all solutions are developed based on real data, and not in an isolated learning environment. As a technology partner, we consider this model to be scalable: businesses receive high-quality AI solutions for their tasks, and young scientists immerse themselves in live production and business processes," said Maria Mozhayskaya, CEO of the Intellect Foundation. In three months, the participants developed 16 application solutions in the field of machine vision, predictive analytics and process automation. All solutions were created on real data and in the infrastructure of customer companies under the guidance of mentors from the industry.
The creation of the Design Laboratory of the Intellect Foundation became possible thanks to the support of the Oleg Deripaska Foundation "Volnoe Delo". You can find out more about the laboratory's activities on our website in the "Project Laboratory" section.
