On May 4, the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev visited Nazarbayev University in order to familiarize himself with the educational and research activities as well as the strategy for further development of the higher educational institution.
During the visit, NU President Shigeo Katsu welcomed the Head of State and presented a master plan for the development of the campus, research centers and laboratories of Nazarbayev University.
President Tokayev was presented with projects in the fields of science, artificial intelligence, education, healthcare, modernization of the political system, digitalization, agriculture, ecology and sports with which the university contributes to the implementation of the initiatives of the Head of State.
In particular, the Head of State familiarized himself with the projects of the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence (ISSAI). ISSAI Founding Director, Prof. Huseyin Atakan Varol, gave a visual presentation on ISSAI’s research work and activities. Prof. Varol expounded on the Institute’s projects, including AI-based speech and natural language processing technologies for the Kazakh language, AI solutions for the Ministry of Finance and advancements in healthcare, and reported on the educational initiatives for students in Kazakhstan. Following this, ISSAI Technical project coordinator, Yerbol Absalyamov, demonstrated the technologies developed by the ISSAI team for automatic Kazakh speech recognition and Kazakh text-to-speech conversion.
In addition, researchers Dr. Zhanat Kappassov, Togzhan Syrymova, and Dr. Azamat Yeshmukhametov presented their scientific projects to the President. Particularly, Dr. Kappassov and Ms. Syrymova demonstrated their project “Tactile Glove for Breast Lump Detection”, and Dr. Yeshmukhametov introduced the President to the project “Tensegrity Robot: A Novel Robot Design Paradigm”.
President Tokayev also had a conversation with students and left a memorable entry in the book of honorary guests of the university. The President pointed out that the university has a major systemic impact on the modernization of higher education in Kazakhstan.