On 30 March 2019, students of the Physics and Mathematics Open Classroom of the JINR University Centre visited the Head Office of Yandex in Moscow. The headquarters of Yandex occupies a 7-store building on the Leo Tolstoy Street. Headed by excellent guides Alexey and Anastasia, students saw how the staff of Yandex works. It was fascinating to learn that workplaces are not just offices with computers but also the library, conference rooms with unusual names, recreation zones.

The walk along halls of the company was constantly interrupted by questions: we have learnt how the work schedule of the staff is organized, how a programme is developed from the idea to the final implementation, what programming languages are in demand. In the company’s library, visitors saw not only reference materials but also one of the first company’s products – “The Bible Computer Guide”, a morphological analysis of the text in the middle 1990s was in demand to search for information on the rapidly developing Internet.

The final part of the excursion was devoted to the lecture by Roman Udovichenko who told the guests about self-driving cars, how this direction is developed by Yandex. The time for the lecture and discussions passed rapidly. On the one hand, considerable success is obvious; on the other hand, there are still many unresolved problems in overcoming of which today’s school students will take part.

The trip was held with the support of Yandex and JINR and continues the contacts that had been established during the visit of Yandex representatives to the Joint institute in January 2019.

Mikhail Zhabitsky, DLNP Senior Researcher