Five Armenian students, who graduated from the Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC) programme at UWC Dilijan, qualified for the 2023 Samsung International Competition held 5-6 July. Three of them were awarded prizes in all three categories:
- 1st place in “Games” category: Emma Manukyan (LightBrains) / Gegharkunik – Gavar
- 2nd place in “Programming” category: Artyom Jhangiryan (ArFinance) / Artsakh – Stepanakert (lives in Yerevan)
- 3rd place in “Social Application” category: Gagik Sargsyan (Traveler) / Yerevan
The other two students whose mobile applications were presented at the competition were:
- Robert Budaghyan (Encrypter) – “Programming” nomination / Yerevan
- Edgar Bezhanyan (Get Product) – “Social Application” nomination / Shirak – Gyumri
Together with partners, Samsung runs SIC programmes at around 60 sites in Russia and one – at UWC Dilijan in Armenia. It was the first year of the SIC programme implementation at UWC Dilijan with 80 graduates. A requirement for completing the course by each student is the development of mobile applications on the Android OS. Top-rated mobile applications are nominated for the Samsung international competition. The final selection of applications are then presented by categories – “Games”,
“Programming” and “Social Application” – to an evaluation panel consisting of Samsung-certified instructors, educators in the field of computer science and tech industry representatives. This year 19 applications across all SIC sites, with 5 of them from SIC at UWC Dilijan, were presented at the final competition held 5-6 July 2023.
“We are absolutely delighted with the results of the performance of our students. All 5 students presented mobile applications developed to the highest standards. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our instructors, who ensured the consistent effort and quality of the work. It is especially rewarding to have such achievements as we are a new site, which has just graduated the first cohort of students,”said Vardan Avagyan, SIC Project Manager at UWC Dilijan.
Speaking at the competition opening, Veronika Zonabend, Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of UWC Dilijan, said, “We are honoured that Samsung has partnered with UWC Dilijan in this groundbreaking initiative. A lot has been done to get the first results and achieve success. Now I can say with confidence that our cooperation with Samsung has opened up new opportunities to contribute to the development of Armenia.”
“Samsung Innovation Campus program is actively developing in more than 30 countries of the world. Last year the program’s course was launched in Dilijan at UWC international college. Thanks to the joint efforts, active support for the project by the college’s management, the professionalism of the teachers, and all the staff involved in the project, the graduates of the program from Armenia developed successful projects and won the awards in the competition finals in all three nominations. We are looking forward to further successful collaboration with UWC Dilijan in the upcoming years.” – said Sergey Pevnev, VP of Samsung Electronics Headquarters for CIS countries.