Press-centre

9 october 2025

The team from the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University was awarded the exclusive right to intern at BELAZ as a prize for winning the 5th International Championship in Mechanical Engineering Case Study Solving among students from the leading technical universities in the CIS.

The first thing the Grand Prix winners of BELAZ CHALLENGE 2025 did during their internship was to study the work of the engineering department at the machine-building enterprise, as well as modern trends in design of mining dump trucks and their individual components and systems. Students from the Mining University also learned in detail about robotic automation of BELAZ equipment and digitalization of related processes, including the intelligent monitoring and predictive analytics system self-designed. The students also visited the assembly line, observing how individual parts and entire units are assembled on conveyors and assembly jigs, transforming into legendary mining trucks.

Russia's leading Mining University and a global manufacturer of mining equipment from Belarus are key partners with a long-standing, close partnership. In 2022, a BELAZ Competence Center opened at the Mining University that is an educational and scientific cluster designed to develop an engineering elite in the mining industry, designed to work at a high level with the constantly improving and increasingly complex BELAZ equipment. One of those responsible for the Center's work is Sergei Serzhan, Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Competencies in Digital Technologies at the Mining University, who completed all stages of the internship with the students:

– The profit of the internship is undeniable! The program was designed in such a way that students were able to see almost all the competencies of a modern engineering. Thanks to this, they were able to finally formulate the topics for their graduation projects, which will all feature BELAZ in one way or another. I'd like to say that BELAZ always welcomes us very warmly, preparing the most engaging programs possible for our students, so students are thrilled to come here for their internships and practice, and we have a long line of applicants to participate in BELAZ-CHALLENGE.

The fifth, anniversary BELAZ-CHALLENGE was held on April 14-15, 2025. 10 university teams from Russia, Uzbekistan, and Belarus competed in this intellectual battle. Fully justifying an informal name "KPD101" with a similarly high real efficiency, the team from the Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University won the Grand Prix and the championship title. Their captain, the fifth-year student of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Matvey Semenov, shared his impressions of the internship:

– My impressions are only positive! For me, as a future mining machinery engineer, it is highly valuable opportunity to get underneath a dump truck, touch every cylinder, see what an electromechanical transmission actually looks like, talk to BELAZ design engineers, ask questions, and hear answers from great experts in the field. The plant impressed me with its high production culture. In the workshops we visited, all parts and tools are laid out according to the best systems for rational organization of workplaces —it's clear this is very convenient for work. I'm very pleased that BELAZ is making leaps and bounds and is becoming a serious competitor to other mining equipment giants in the global market.