Dragon Boats festival held at UNN
On 10 June 2024, Lobachevsky University hosted a cultural festival with international participation to celebrate the Chinese Dragon Boats Holiday, also known as 端午 (duan-wu) or the Double Five Holiday. The festival included a 3D modelling and 3D printing competition.
The event was organised by the Asia-Pacific Centre of the UNN International Cooperation Office. Great support in holding the event was provided by the Lobachevsky University partner company, TPK Foliplast. This is a leading manufacturing and engineering company in the field of rapid prototyping, vacuum casting of plastics, CNC milling, 3D printing and scanning.
"Lobachevsky University is one of the flagships of IT education: the first Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics in the Soviet Union was established here in 1963, and now the Neimark IT Campus is being established basing on our university. Another distinctive feature of UNN is active international cooperation with Chinese partners, close interaction of the university with schools in Russia and abroad. Therefore, the Dragon Boat Festival is aimed not only at developing 3D modelling and printing skills among school students, but also at strengthening Russian-Chinese youth ties and popularising professions of the future," said Alexander Bedny, UNN Vice-Rector for International Affairs and Networking.
As part of the event, representatives of TPK Foliplast Maria Sharova and Leonid Kurylev introduced the participants to the company's activities and gave a lecture on 3D modelling and 3D printing.
"I would like to thank all the participants of today's event, with a special word of thanks to the organisers of the competition. It was very interesting and informative. We are glad that 3D printing is becoming more and more part of our lives and is being used in various fields. The competition was indeed very symbolic, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia, and we were able to touch on Chinese traditions. We were pleased and interested in the students' projects. We would like to attend such events more often," shared Maria Sharova, TPK Foliplast manager.
The competition was aimed at developing engineering and design thinking in young people. Taking part in the contest that was held within the framework of the Russia-China Year of Culture were school and university students. As part of the competition, participants had to independently model and 3D print dragon-shaped boats and defend their design works themed around the holiday.
"It was a very exciting event, it was interesting to watch and analyse the young engineers' creative work. I hope that the university will continue to support the development of this area in the future," said Leonid Kurylev, design engineer at TPK Foliplast.
