📢 How to Train Your Robot: A Practical Guide to Physical AI

We invite you to an exciting open lecture on the rapidly evolving field of Physical AI and modern robot manipulation.
You’ll learn how robots acquire real-world skills through learning, why high-quality data is essential, and how this new paradigm is reshaping robotics today.
The talk focuses on understanding where the technology is heading, and why this shift matters.

🗓 Date: December 11 (Thursday)
🕕 Time: 18:00-21:00
📍 Room: Ammochostos

👤 Speaker: Sergey Arkhangelskiy

Sergey Arkhangelskiy is the founder and CEO of Positronic Robotics, an open-source platform based in Paphos focused on ML-native tooling for real-world robot manipulation.

Previously, he co-founded WANNA, a computer-vision company that created virtual try-on technologies for major global brands and was later acquired by Farfetch.
Before that, he spent over a decade at Google, working on Search Ranking.

At Positronic, Sergey is building data pipelines, training systems, and evaluation tools that make advanced robot learning practical and widely accessible.

🎓 Everyone is welcome, don’t miss the chance to learn about the future of robotics from someone building it right here in Paphos!

📢 Boolean Circuits: Recent Advances & Open Questions

We invite you to an open lecture by Alexander Kulikov, a researcher at JetBrains with a PhD and Dr.Sci. from the Steklov Institute and coauthor of multiple books and online courses taken by over a million students.

🗓 Date: Tuesday, December 16, 2025
⏰ Time: 13:00
📍 Place: John Ioannides Auditorium, The Cyprus Institute, Nicosia, in person

📘 Abstract

Boolean circuits form a simple, natural, and expressive model of computation, powerful enough to capture algorithms and central to many areas of computer science, including algorithms, complexity theory, cryptography, formal verification, hardware design, machine learning, and SAT solving. In this talk, I will survey classical and recent developments in circuit theory, with a focus on results from our group on circuit lower bounds, circuit synthesis, and fine-grained complexity. I will highlight key open problems and outline promising directions for future collaboration.

You can find all details on the official event page
Come join us and explore the latest developments in circuit complexity!

📢 Admissions Livestream: New Date Announced!

Hi everyone! We’re happy to share that we’ve scheduled a new date for our CSAI admissions livestream. 🎓✨
Join us to learn more about the program, the application process, and to ask any questions you might have.

🗓 Date: January 25
⏰ Time: 11:00 UTC (13:00 EET)

To join, please react to the next message in the chat

👋 Hey guys! A quick hello from the CSAI team!

We are Kamaliya, Ivan, Assylkhan, and Daniel - current CSAI students here at Neapolis University Pafos.
We want to present the livestream once again!

If you are thinking about applying or just curious about what life is actually like here, come hang out with us! We’re hosting a student-led livestream this weekend to spill the tea (and the facts). ☕️

We’re going to: ✨ Answer your burning questions about admission. ✨ Share our personal stories (and struggles!). ✨ Give you the unfiltered truth about the program and living in Cyprus. ✨ Get to know you better!

🗓 When: Sunday, January 25
⏰ Time: 11:00 UTC (13:00 EET)
📢 How to join: Want the link? Just react with a ❤️ to the message above, and you’re in!

See you there! 💙🚀

Registration for the JetBrains Academy Youth Math Challenge 2026 is OPEN! 🧠💥

Save the date: February 15, 2026. Registration is open until February 13.

As usual, you can join solo or with up to 2 friends 🤝

There are 2 leagues:
😎 Junior: ages 13–16 (school students)
🧑‍🎓 Senior: ages 17–18 (school students)

Register now:
👉 https://lp.jetbrains.com/academy/youth-challenge/math_2026/

🚨 Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence BSc Admission Is Now Open!

Here are the key dates you need to know:

🟢 First Round
🗓️ Application Deadline: April 28, 2026
🧠 Entrance Test: May 3, 2026

🟣 Second Round
🗓️ Application Deadline: June 9, 2026
🧠 Entrance Test: June 14, 2026

🎓 This year, the JetBrains Foundation will award up to 40 full scholarships!

Got questions?
👋 Join our live webinar with program managers on February 25
📘 Or check out our updated How to Prepare and How to Apply guides.

💡 As always, all applicants are automatically considered for the scholarship, which is awarded through a selection process. If you're not selected, you may still be offered a self-funded spot.

Good luck 🍀

📣 Distributed Algorithms

Hi everyone! We’re excited to announce the first seminar of this semester.
Our speaker will be Georgie Levtsov, who will introduce the core models and techniques used in the field.

🧠 Speaker: Georgie Levtsov
🗓 February, 13
⏰ 13:00 (Cyprus time)
📍 Neapolis University Pafos (NUP)

If you’d like to join, please message Natalia (@natalia_kita) as usual

Abstract

We will start the study of distributed algorithms by examining selected chapters from "Distributed Algorithms (2020)" by Juho Hirvonen and Jukka Suomela. In particular, we will introduce several computational models used in distributed systems, such as the Port Numbering (PN), LOCAL, and CONGEST models.
We will show how these models are applied to classical distributed problems such as graph coloring and the all-pairs shortest path problem (APSP). In addition, we present key techniques used to establish impossibility results, including covering maps and the analysis of local neighborhoods.

Thinking about applying for the JetBrains Foundation-backed CSAI BSc, but not 100% sure what you’ll actually be studying?

We’ve got you.

We're launching a CSAI crash course to help you learn the ropes! This series of informative videos will be posted over the next few weeks and will feature the individual course professors teaching the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAI) BSc.

The first video is about discrete mathematics, taught by our beloved Professor Alexander S. Kulikov.

Discrete maths is the foundation of computer science.
Logic. Graphs. Combinatorics. Proofs.

If you want to understand algorithms, AI, and cryptography – this is where it starts.

Watch here

More videos coming next week. Stay tuned 👀

Thank you for joining our Ask Me Anything session!

Here's the list of the resources we shared during the presentation:
• CSAI Program official page
• How to apply page
• How to prepare page
• Curriculum

If you have more questions that we didn't cover during the session, please don't hesitate to write them down in the chat (comments section).

If you want to discuss your personal matters and don't want to share some confidential documents, please write an email to nup@jetbrains.com

See you!

📣 Distributed Algorithms Seminar, Second Meeting

Hi everyone! This Friday, 27th, we’re having the second meeting in our distributed algorithms series.

🧠 Speaker: Nikolai Chukhin
🗓 Friday, 27th
⏰ 13:00 PM (Cyprus time)
📍 Room: Neapolis University Pafos (NUP)

If you’re planning to come, please message Natalia (@natalia_kita).


Abstract

Based on the paper by Drucker, Kuhn, and Oshman, we will study the congested clique model. It is a model where players communicate with each other over a complete network in order to compute some function of their inputs. The number of bits that can be sent on any edge in a round is bounded by some parameter. We will consider two versions of the model: in the first, the players communicate by unicast, allowing them to send a different message on each of their links in one round; in the second, the players communicate by broadcast, sending one message to all their neighbors.
We will show that the unicast congested clique can simulate powerful classes of bounded-depth circuits, implying that even slightly super-constant lower bounds for the congested clique would give new lower bounds in circuit complexity.
We will also show that in the broadcast setting, the subgraph detection problem requires polynomially many rounds for several classes of subgraphs. We also give upper bounds for the subgraph detection problem, and relate the hardness of triangle detection in the broadcast congested clique to the communication complexity of set disjointness in the 3-party number-on-forehead model.

🎬 CSAI crash course – week 3

Today’s spotlight:

🤖 Machine Learning by Alexander Avdiushenko, PhD

How do algorithms actually learn on data?
What does “training a model” mean in practice?

This course combines ML theory and implementation of real AI systems.

Watch here

If you’re applying for the CSAI program, this will be one of your core courses.

See you next week! 👀

Hi everyone! Today we continue the seminar topic from last week: Distributed Algorithms

But please note the time change:

⏰ Today it’s at 16:00 (4 PM) instead of the usual 13:00.
🗓 This Friday, 6th
📍 Neapolis Univerity Paphos

We will show the **upper and lower bounds** for finding a **4-cycle** in the **CLIQUE-BCAST** model.
Feel free to join even if you missed the previous talk!

And as usual, if you want to attend, please message Natalia @natalia_kita.