The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) and its general partner, Alfa-Bank, have announced a call for applications for the annual Skoltech Summer School of Machine Learning SMILES-2025, to be held July 14-27 at the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in China. Over the course of 12 days, participants will explore large language models (LLM), multimodal approaches, multi-agent systems, safe AI, and generative methods in computer vision.

Participants will attend lectures, seminars, workshops, and poster sessions, and work on projects under the guidance of top AI experts from Skoltech, Alfa-Bank, AIRI (the school's scientific partner), and HIT. Professor Evgeny Burnaev, the school's scientific director, who heads Skoltech's AI Center, is an absolute Russian leader in terms of the number of papers accepted at A* conferences – the ranking indicated in the Artificial Intelligence federal project. In 2024, the Skoltech AI Center headed by Burnaev was a Russian leader in the number of A* publications per co-author.

Launched in 2019, SMILES has become a leading summer school in artificial intelligence and machine learning. This summer, for the first time, SMILES will take place outside of Russia, thanks to a partnership with the Department of Computer Science at HIT, a leading Asian university ranked among the top 150 global universities by Times Higher Education. 100 selected candidates from around the world will attend the school offline and up to 300 participants will join its various events online. The official language of the school will be English.

The highlight of SMILES-2025 will be a project hackathon where teams of two to four people will solve applied problems ranging from text and image generation to multi-agent simulations. The best projects will be recommended for research publications or practical applications.

"This year we are taking another big step towards the internationalization of SMILES: holding the school in Harbin will help our students to immerse themselves in the global academic environment and allow our Chinese partners to showcase their cutting-edge AI research. We are glad that Alfa-Bank is once again supporting this project, which will help attract even more talented students and budding researchers to this event," says Alexey Zaitsev, the director of SMILES-2025 and an associate professor at Skoltech.

"Our partnership with Skoltech and participation in SMILES-2025 is a strategically important initiative for Alfa-Bank. Our joint work on advanced AI technologies helps us keep abreast of the latest trends and strengthen our cooperation with leading Russian and international research centers. We hope that SMILES will be an excellent platform for networking and sharing expertise. We will invite the best participants for internships in our bank," says Marat Ismagulov, the HR director of Alfa-Bank.

Applications for SMILES-2025 will be accepted until April 23. Participants will be selected based on their motivation, academic record, and interest in applied AI. You can apply and find more details on the official website. Offline and online participation is free for selected candidates, including free air travel from major Russian cities to Harbin, accommodation, and meals.