SFU 25 May 2023 13:56
The startup of a graduate student of SFU became the winner of the "Student Startup" competition of the federal project "Platform of University Technological Entrepreneurship" with the support of the Innovation Promotion Fund.
Anton Zhumbey, a post—graduate student and junior researcher at the laboratory "Agrobiotechnologies for improving soil fertility and agricultural Product Quality" of the D.I. Ivanovsky Academy of Biology and Biotechnology of the Southern Federal University, has developed an automated information and analytical system "Integral" for calculating the integral indicator of soil fertility.
"First of all, our product is aimed at working with agricultural land, because today there are a number of problems with the deterioration of soil conditions in the incorrect conduct of economic activity. To fix the condition at the time of the transfer of rights to the land plot, it will be possible to insure the landlord and tenant, as well as the buyer and seller of the land plot in case of an extraordinary check of the condition of the land plot, or in case of violation of the condition by the user," explains Anton Zhumbey.
The startup is a more complete version of a semi-automatic system for entering, storing and processing information about soils in order to certify individual land plots. As the graduate student notes, there are no direct analogues in Russia today for this product, but there are disparate databases of organizations that are engaged in soil research and data accumulation.
The system will be useful for agricultural producers, owners who sell or lease land plots. While the database is being updated with information about the soils of the Rostov region, but, as the developer notes, the system is universal and can be available for use by other regions of our country.
According to the graduate student, during the implementation of the project there was a need for market research and drawing up a product promotion strategy.
"To create a system for storing and processing soil data in the form in which we planned to implement it, the developer is required to combine a number of technical solutions that have not been used in this area before. We combine methods of automatic data processing with the formation of ready—made reporting and intellectual analysis (evaluation of the integral indicator of soil fertility and standard crop yield)," Anton Zhumbey notes.
Now the team is debugging systems inside the software package — testing has already been completed, it remains to bring the software package to the planned functionality.
"While working on the project, we applied our own experience of soil surveys and reporting for land users, also attracted employees to carry out development and testing work, specialists combining work with soil data and web development, as well as understanding the work of mining algorithms. In addition, with the grant we received, we purchased our own server to deploy a software package on it. In addition to me, the team includes Yuri Litvinov, PhD, associate professor of the Department of Soil Science and Land Resources Assessment of the Southern Federal University, as well as Anton Mezhenkov, a 4th—year graduate student of the Academy of Biology and Biotechnology of the Southern Federal University, a specialist in cartography and work with soil data," the graduate student shares.
The mentor and ideological inspirer of the project, according to Anton, was Professor, Head of the Department of Soil Science and Land Resources Assessment of the Southern Federal University Tatiana Minkina. In addition, in 2022, the team took part in the SBS Accelerator of the Southern Federal University, where the developers were also able to receive a comprehensive expert assessment of their project.
Now the team plans to take part in a competition for a grant under the program of the Innovation Promotion Fund "Start-1" to ensure a confident entry into the market.
"The market implementation of projects at the junction of scientific fields, in particular agrobiotechnologies and IT, is a special challenge, because interdisciplinary competencies are required here. Thanks to such initiative and talented colleagues as Anton Zhumbey and the ABiB team, such projects are being successfully implemented. At SFU, we try to stimulate the development of interdisciplinary projects at the initial stages in entrepreneurial competence trainings, then in SfeduNet intensive courses and Accelerators, and we consider the most promising ones for residency, financing and work within the university startup studio "Southern Startup Factory". These and other activities of the SFU entrepreneurship development system students and staff can find on startup.sfedu.ru . In any case, the main thing is the result in the form of value for people," shared Stanislav Trufanov, director of the project office for the Development of Innovative and entrepreneurial competencies of the SFU Technology Transfer Center, SBS Accelerator methodology.
Please note that this press release is based on materials provided by the company. AK&M Information Agency shall not be held liable for its contents, nor for the legal and other consequences of its publication.
A graduate student of SFU has created a system for calculating the integral indicator of soil fertility
