- 06.05.2026 12:28
Tula Advanced Engineering School Expands
New laboratories and educational spaces for the Tula Engineering School “Intelligent Defense Systems” will be equipped in the first academic building of Tula State University, as well as a functional passage to the neighboring Building 13.
The first academic building of Tula State University was built over seventy years ago according to the design of the renowned Tula architect Ivan Porfiryevich Gryzlov. Since 1955, it has housed the Tula Mining Institute.
After the merger of the Tula Mechanical and Tula Mining Institutes, as well as the Tula Mining College, into one educational institution, the Tula Polytechnic Institute, in 1963, the building became the first academic building. It housed departments whose specialties were classified.
Today, the building is occupied by one of the structural divisions of Tula State University, the V.P. Gryazev Institute of High-Precision Systems. It continues to train specialists for the country's defense industry. The building retains its special status, with a restricted access for faculty, students, and visitors. As technology advances, new laboratories and specialized educational spaces are being equipped.
A new impetus to the renewal was given by the creation of the Tula Engineering School “Intelligent Defense Systems” in 2024. Tula AES has become one of the fifty in the country, its main mission is to create a unique scientific, engineering and educational environment for research and experimental work in the priority areas of Russia’s technological development, as well as to train new engineering personnel for the military-industrial complex. Today, the AES includes laboratories of inertial sensors of primary information, orientation and navigation systems, artificial intelligence technologies in radar locating, digital control systems for complex dynamic objects as well as special educational spaces.
The expansion of the list of undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as the active involvement of schoolchildren in the AES program, required further expansion of the facilities, so it was decided to use the basement space for a complete renovation.
The scope of work is significant, as all the utilities are replaced on an area of over six hundred square meters, new windows are installed, the flooring and ceiling are replaced, and the walls and lighting are updated, along with the installation of video surveillance.
“It is important for us not only to introduce new areas, but also to make them attractive and convenient, so we coordinate our work with the students”, said Oleg Aleksandrovich Kravchenko, Rector of Tula State University. Together with the students of the Advanced Engineering School, its director, Olga Anatolyevna Fomicheva, and Vice-Rector for General Affairs and Digitalization, Vladimir Ivanovich Grigoryev, he inspected the progress of the renovation works.
Classrooms will be equipped with a testing ground for robotic systems and swarm interaction of autonomous control systems. There will be a special space for students to work in, classrooms, laboratories, and a waiting area equipped with sofas, a library, a tennis table, and vending machines. The walls will be decorated with information about the leading enterprises in the Tula region.
For the first time, buildings 1 and 13 will be connected by a functional passage through the courtyard. Students have proposed options for landscaping with benches and outdoor exercise equipment. In the near future, the “Workshop” production site will be opened in building 13.
- Students from the Department of Electro- and Nanotechnology and the Scientific and Educational Center for Nanotechnology also study in building 13, - said O.A. Kravchenko. – It will be convenient and quick for them to move to building 1, and vice versa, if someone is studying in building 13. This is the first time such a large-scale improvement project has been carried out here. As a matter of fact we are introducing new areas, expanding, and making our university more attractive.
Dmitry Litvinov
Photographs by Mikhail Gindin
