Estonia

The grant is provided with the aim of balancing and encouraging brain circulation through returning researcher grants.

The Estonian state attaches importance both to international researchers coming to Estonia to work and to the return of Estonian researchers who have gone abroad to work, to facilitate the application of knowledge and experience acquired abroad in Estonia. In addition to balancing emigration, we contribute to ensuring the future growth of researchers and engineers.

Smartgene is an extracurricular private hobby school that consists of different extracurricular STEAM activities and classes for children in the kindergarten until classes 4-6, including robotics class, electronics class, science class, landscaping & architecture class, and “future skills class”. All the classes take place once a week.

Smartgene also organizes STEAM city camps during school vacations, aimed at children aged 7-13 years. The mission of Smartgene is to be a safe and instructive environment for children to learn STEM subjects through targeted games.

The objective of Smartgene is to encourage children to playfully solve real life everyday problems. Since the demand for STEAM proficiency increases in Estonia every year, Smartgene has developed extracurricular classes to introduce children at early ages science, robotics, and electronic areas. It's impact is measured by the number of kids participating in the extracurricular classes and camps.

The objectives are related to Estonia's broader government strategy to raise the popularity of science and IT as a career choice due to the fact that Estonia is facing a reality, where the demand for such professionals is higher than the supply. In addition, it is associated with the aim to develop a research-intensive economy.

The NPO Robotics programme aims to offer different learning and competition opportunities in robotics. The NPO Robotics has several different projects and outcomes and some of its programmes are connected to international initiatives and competitions:

• Competition RoboMiku - gives pupils the opportunity to build their own robot individually or in teams and put them to the test. The competition has different categories depending on the robot and age of the pupil
• First Lego League - a three-part robotics program meant for different age groups and based on that, have different difficulty levels. The aim is to popularize science and technology in a fun way. With that, other necessary skills and knowledge are being developed.
• School visits - workshops in robotics are offered to the interested schools. In one workshop, 20 students can participate. The necessary tools, equipment, robots and instructors are visiting schools all over Estonia
• Several projects that aim to promote robotics in pupils and teachers. They also offer additional training to teachers so that robotics would be a natural part of the curriculum.

The objective is to give young people practical knowledge about technology and robotics. The main focus is on practical knowledge and opportunity to work with technology that otherwise may not be available in schools. In addition, students have the opportunity to compete with each other.

The objectives are related to Estonia's broader government strategy to raise the popularity of engineering and technology as a career path. The aim is also to develop the STEM teachers so that the teaching quality would be high and the used methods modern and in compliance with the needs of the students.

The Mobile Bioclass project started in Estonia in 2014 with the aim to introduce the biosciences in Estonian schools. The programme brought the latest DNA testing and research methods to schools all over Estonia.

The Mobile Class project started originally in Lithuania by Thermo Fisher Scientific and has since been the main collaboration partner for the University of Tartu (project coordinator). Thermo Fisher Scientific is providing the project with laboratory tools and equipment ever since. The instructors of the programme are University of Tartu students mainly from science and technology faculty.

The main target group for the Mobile Bioclass is high school students. The project also aims to bring its programme to the smaller schools that otherwise do not have the possibilities to visit research laboratories and universities.

The programme lasts for about six hours and is for 24 students at the time with 6 instructors. The necessary tools for the programme are brought to the school from University of Tartu. The programme consists of a lecture (about four hours) and practical experiment (about two hours). The programme uses a DNA PCR analysis as its practical part to consolidate the theoretical knowledge.

The objective of the project is to popularize biosciences and introduce the modern methods for researching DNA and technology used in the biotechnology laboratories. As a result, the project increases the knowledge about the learning opportunities of biology and gene technology. The objective is to visit one school per week during a school year with the emphasis on smaller schools.

The objectives are measured by the number of schools the Mobile Class has visited and the number of kilometers traveled doing that.

The KVARK project was grown out of the Rocket69 science TV contest (see related page). The main reason for the creation was to broaden the public knowledge about science and scientific thinking. KVARK concentrates on three main actions:

1. Popularizing science, technology, and engineering
2. Rising the quality of the scientific, engineering, and technological education
3. Adding value to working in the science, technology, and engineering subject fields

The team of KVARK includes undergraduates and graduates from different STEM specialities.  KVARK’s objectives are to popularize scientific thinking and scientific approach in public by offering scientific content for different events, scientific entertainment in a form of science theatre, and by conducting clever workshops for both children and adults. KVARK also produces scientific and educational exhibits for museums and helps organisations to arrange projects that support science-based society, and environment.The objectives also include raising young people's (primary target group) interest in STEM education, professions, and careers in these fields. The objectives are measured by the projects supported; the number of events/workshops carried out. The indirect indication is evaluated based on the statistics of popularity of STEM specialties among the students’ enrolling universities, vocational schools, and hobby education.

The Cool Geography Class was developed by the EGEA-Tartu (European Geography Association for students and young geographers) in 2016. The aim of the project is to popularise the scientific geography and its career opportunities in Estonian schools. The development of the programme is based on the input of (geography) teachers and their needs for practical lessons.

Every year, the programme develops four new lesson topics that consist of theoretical and practical work. The lessons are conducted by the University of Tartu geography students (all together about 20 students). The lessons are provided based on the schools interest and for them and for the school. The lessons are completely free of charge.

In 2020, the lessons topics were:

• spatial planning
• smartphones as a tool for geography
• natural geography
• 3D modelling

The progress of the programme is measured in terms of the number the schools visited every year. The programme supports the countries aim to increase the number of applicatns in the universities in the STEM fields and with the goal of smart specialisation.

The University of Tartu Youth Academy programme (henceforth UTYA) is one of the longest running STEM promotion initiatives in Estiona (launched in 1965). The aim of UTYA is to create opportunities for the development of pupils who have already shown a deeper interest in science. The programme facilitates enriching a pupil´s knowledge beyond the usual school curriculum and also the resources to spend their leisure time meaningfully.

The UTYA organizes courses in three different levels and a range of subjects, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, life sciences, but also in linguistics, philosophy and other non-STEM areas. Some courses are correspondence courses conducted via ordinary mail and some are carried out using e-learning facilities. Pupils can participate either individually or as a group. There are no entrance requirements, although the programme requires pupils to be motivated and able to work independently.

The instructors of the courses are usually University of Tartu professors, researchers or students. Pupils get feedback on their work as well as after graduation from the course. Upon completion, participants receive a certificate from University of Tartu.

To enhance the pupils’ abilities and learning styles, the UTYA offers some testing facilities. Some of the tests can be taken online. In addition, for pupils who are interested in participating in different kinds of contests, the UTYA organizes national Olympiads in maths, physics, chemistry, informatics, biology, geography and other areas. When students perform well at national Olympiads they are given the opportunity to participate in international contests or Olympiads. Estonian teams have been taking part in such contests since 1992 and each year pupils have won several medals.

Through these activities as well as participation in other projects and events, the programme also contributes to popularising science and technology to the wider audience.

The main goal of the programme is to create opportunities for the development of pupils who have already shown a deeper interest in science. The programme does so by:

• offering optional science courses to pupils, mostly available online for students in grade 7 – 12
• providing financial grants to gifted students to promote studying in Estonia (instead of going abroad) through the ‘Talents to Targu’ sub-programme (since 2020)
• offering teaching resources to teachers that help organize individualized learning in classes and are useful for additional extracurricular activities
• offering teacher-training sessions to schools focused on gifted children's education and psychology.

The objectives of the programme are related to the Estonians' aim to build on a science-based economy and smart specialisation. In order to do that, there is a need to offer gifted pupil opportunities to develop themselves and have good opportunities in the country so that there would not be a need for gifted children to leave for the better opportunities.

ESTCube is a student satellite project and the first satellite in the world that attempted to use an electric solar wind sail (e-sail). The project aims to give students an opportunity to give their theoretical knowledge a practical output by building real-life satellites.

For every project, a team of engineers, mechanics, programmes and students is put together. With the team, a detailed plan and goals are set. For the ESTCube-1, the goal of the project was to successfully launch a student satellite. During the time in orbit, the satellite was actively used for taking images and downloading data, while students rapidly continued improving software for all subsystems. With this, the satellite was launched in 2013 and by 2014, the attitude determination and control system software reached its full functionality. In 2015, the batteries of the satellite got empty and the connection with the satellite ended.

Based on the good results from ESTCube-1, the activities continued with a new ESTCube-2 project in 2017. ESTCube-2 is a technology demonstration mission for deorbiting technology plasma break, the interplanetary propulsion system electric solar wind sail and advanced satellite subsystem solutions.

The ESTCube team is also participating in several bigger events and seminars. In addition to that, they also organize events that introduce the space technology and opportunities in the project. Every summer, the ESTCube Team is accepting summer traineeship members.

The main objective of the project is to promote space technology as a career path, by giving students an opportunity to gain practical knowledge about space technology and launch satellites that are made in Estonia. One of the goals is also to develop innovation in the field and put more emphasis in the field of research.

At the national level, the objective is to develop a research-based economy and use smart specialisation and launch more technology-based companies. Estonia faces a problem with the lack of engineers and technology developers in the near future. Therefore, it is important to bring more students to this career path.