Six students of The Cisco Regional Academy of UzSciNet in Uzbekistan qualified to participate at the 3rd Student Networking Technologies Olympiad, which will be held on 27 June.

Gulnara Musina, Rustam Gaisin, Olga Semyonova, Madina Gaisina, Nikolay Semyonov and Dmitriy Ronjin will represent Uzbekistan at the 3rd Student Networking Technologies Olympiad. These six students won qualifying round among 181 participants.

Uzbek students will contest to win the main prize – a grant of 60 000 Russian rubles and obtain a possible employment in multinational companies like IBS, AMT and Cisco Systems.

In 1997 world-famous company CISCO developed educational materials for high qualified specialists in informational and communicational technologies. Ever since, there have been established CISCO Academies in the world. Today there are more than 150 academies around the globe with more 1.5 million students.

In 2000 CISCO Local Academy was established in Uzbekistan and it is considered one of the prestigious educational institutions among IT specialists. In 2007 the academy was awarded with Regional Academy status for its achievements. There were prepared 340 graduates by Uzbek Cisco Networking Academy.

Vadim Navotniy, Project Manager of UNDP "Capacity Building for Internet Technologies Development and Promotion in Uzbekistan", commented: "I am very delighted that graduates of our project will participate in Student Networking Technologies Olympiad in Moscow. I wish them to win main prize and demonstrate their professional IT knowledge in this competition"

UNDP "Capacity Building for Internet Technologies Development and Promotion in Uzbekistan" focuses to facilitate Uzbekistan’s further integration into the global information community by providing Internet access and relevant training to the population, which is vital to create an open society and sustainable human development.

Student Networking Technologies Olympiad has been conducted in framework of international and educational programme "Cisco Networking Academy Program". The main objective of the Olympiad is to develop talented youth specialists in professional IT sphere, enhance technical knowledge in telecommunication technologies, and encourage youth to participate in national and international info-communicational projects.

Student Networking Technologies Olympiad has been conducted for two years and it is has been transformed to the representative forum of technical young student specialists, which generates interest of mass media and IT-society. For the 3rd Student Networking Technologies Olympiad there were 277 participants of leading Universities - 51 Russia (27 cities), 15 institutes of higher education of CIS (7 cities) –Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.