Course projects

Our Digital Innovation Industry Project is looking for partners to challenge our students in creating and managing digital products. This is a good opportunity for companies and organisations to get a fresh pair of eyes on their problem and find an idea to continue with in the future.

We expect a problem statement or idea related to user experience from the partner, and our student teams conduct background research, and interviews with potential users to create a prototype for the solution. The presented idea or problem should therefore be:

• solvable with a digital product
• doable yet challenging for students
• important to the partner.

During the project, the partner organisations or companies meet with the students four times. The first meeting is at the beginning of the course and the teams discuss the first ideas and thoughts. The second time takes place about a month before the end of the course, and the teams introduce a more robust solution. At the second meeting, the teams will receive additional feedback, which they will take into account in their final presentation. During the course, students may have questions for which they will contact partners, but the organisation can determine how involved it wants to be. The working language of the project is English.

This course takes place every autumn and spring semester. For more information, visit the project website. To submit a project, fill out the online form. For more information contact Yana Halas ([email protected]).

Read about SK ID Solutions' experience in the Digital Innovation Industry Project.

The software project course seeks partner companies with a problem or idea that needs software application development but is missing developers. In the project, our final year IT students team up and build partnering companies a suitable IT solution using knowledge from their studies.

Teams will carry out the project between September and December. Each team will consist of four highly motivated students who will collectively spend at least 600 hours on the project.

If you are interested in proposing a project for our students, we only need a simple one-page description focusing on what IT solution you want, what problem it will solve, and who the user is. Find examples of past projects and additional info on the course website.

The software project course takes place every autumn semester. To submit your project proposal, fill out the online form. Contact Marinos Georgiadis ([email protected]) with questions about the project.

Read about Reocto's experience with the software project course.

We are seeking partner organisations for our Data Science and Machine Learning courses this autumn. In these courses, students will learn to apply relevant data science and machine learning methods for extracting valuable insights and building models from the data. During the course, the students will form groups (of 3 - 4) to work on a project. We strive to provide our students with practical experience, thus we are looking for a diverse set of projects that represent real-life challenges. It is a great opportunity for the project partners to verify a hypothesis or test a new data set. For the students, it is a good way to learn and gain perspective.

What type of projects are we looking for? We do not have a set list of ideas we wish to see, but keep in mind that the project should be:

• strongly linked to Machine Learning or Data Science
• important to you and society
• challenging (e.g., no ready-made solutions online)
• doable by students
• accompanied by a relevant dataset or data that can be collected online with little effort.

How much time should partners dedicate? Ideally, the partners would be in contact with our students at the beginning of the project to explain the idea and initial hypothesis about the dataset. However, our lecturers are supervising the projects, too. Partners are more than welcome to attend the final project presentation organised in December. Please note that the students choose the ideas they work with so we cannot guarantee that your project will be chosen.

The data science and machine learning project courses take place every autumn semester. To submit a project, fill out the online form. For more information contact Dmytro Fishman ([email protected]).

This spring semester, the University of Tartu is offering a course focused on the planning and execution of AI-driven application projects.

Unlike traditional courses that focus on training models from scratch, our unique approach teaches students how to smartly integrate and leverage existing top-tier AI models, tools, and ready-made solutions.

This is an excellent opportunity for your organization to:

• Validate AI Ideas: Test a specific AI-based concept or hypothesis.
• Rapid Prototyping: Build a functional prototype without over-committing internal resources.
• Assess Integration: Evaluate how existing AI tools can be integrated into your business processes.

Our students work in structured teams, guided from the initial problem definition through to comprehensive testing and validation.

We are looking for ideas that create real value and are practically applicable. Projects should be:

• Implementation-focused: Utilizing existing models (e.g., LLMs, image generators) to solve a specific problem.
• Well-defined: Feasible within the second half of a single semester.
• Value-driven: Providing real benefits or new insights to the partner or society.
• Measurable: Allowing for test scenarios to evaluate quality and performance.

As a partner, your role is to define the problem and provide context. You’ll meet with students at the start to set expectations and are invited to the final demo session at the end of the semester to provide feedback. Ongoing mentoring is welcome but not required.

To submit your project, please complete our online application form. This form also collects proposals for our Data Science and Machine Learning courses held during the autumn semester. Our faculty will review all submissions and categorize them based on project level and technical fit. Following this review, students will select the projects that best match their interests and skill sets.

For any inquiries, please contact Ardi Tampuu, Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence, at [email protected].