In November 2024, the Department of Software Engineering and Management Intelligent Technologies of NTU «KhPI», a powerful educational center for training IT specialists, celebrates its 60th anniversary. Founded by Areg Vaharshakovich Dabagyan in 1964, it successfully implements an important mission: it trains specialists who provide the development of IT infrastructure and industry in Ukraine, and at the same time opens the way to professional and personal freedom for its students.
The history of the Department of Software Engineering and Management Intelligent Technologies (SEMIT) began in 1964, when Areg Dabagyan, a professor at the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, founded the Department of Automatic Motion Control. In 1990, it was headed by Professor Mykhailo Godlevskyi, now the Director of the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technologies at NTU «KhPI». He defined the strategy of the department, which has fully justified itself in the following decades – fundamental training of specialists in close cooperation with the international scientific community and leading IT companies. The department has always actively responded to current trends in the IT industry and has changed its name several times to emphasize its educational and research profile. The last renaming took place in 2022 and now it is called the Department of Software Engineering and Management Intelligence Technologies. Since 2022, it was headed by Professor Igor Gamayun, and since 2024, Associate Professor Andriy Kopp has been the head of the department.
Today, the department of SEMIT of Kharkiv Polytechnic offers its students high-quality higher IT education. Its teachers train IT specialists at the bachelor’s and master’s level in two of the most popular IT specialties in Ukraine and the world: «Software Engineering» and «Computer Science» (educational program «Computer Science and Intelligent Systems»). The students of the department had the opportunity to be the first to participate in the «Innovation Campus» project. This is a unique educational technology in Ukraine, which involves the study of a full range of software system development technologies in a flexible format based on a project approach, gamification principles, and peer-to-peer cooperation.
Thanks to close international relations, students of the department of SEMIT annually participate in international programs with leading European universities: Rhine-Westphalian Technical University of Aachen, Alpine-Adriatic University of Klagenfurt, Bratislava University of Economics and Management, Sorbonne University Paris Nord. The scientific and pedagogical potential of the department is formed by professors, associate professors and lecturers with a confirmed level of English at B2-C1 and relevant and modern areas of research that will allow students and graduate students to carry out interesting projects, participate in competitions and contests for their self-realization. The department staff includes 7 professors, 25 associate professors, 6 senior lecturers and 2 assistants.
Over the 60 years of its history, the Department of Software Engineering and Intelligent Management Technologies of NTU «KhPI» has established itself as a leader in IT education in Ukraine. Despite the difficult conditions of the war, today more than 900 undergraduate and graduate students study at the department, and more than 200 applicants choose the department every year. The slogan «Not just education, but an opportunity to change lives» fully corresponds to the department’s mission to open the way to professional and personal freedom for graduates.
