Makhbuba Salimova, student of Samarkand State University, Faculty of Digital Technologies, founder of the only club of female programmers in the region.  The winner of the contest of girls-coders "Matches in March Coders girl" of the Tashkent University of Information Technologies.  She is a member of the "Tumaris.Tech" project, which aims to support women's startup projects in the country.

    The program for creating an online menu for restaurants serving foreign tourists was among the top 20 startups selected at the final stage of the project.  She is also a resident of the Incubation Center of Samarkand State University, which supports start-up projects, and is the author of a project to develop a Braille phone.  This device is designed for the visually impaired and is based on the Braille alphabet.

    “Until now, people with visual impairments use special voice synthesizer applications when talking on the phone,” Makhbuba Salimova said.  - This applications are sometimes inconvenient when working with the Internet and voice signals.  The advantage of a Braille phone is that it is cheap and easy to use because it is controlled by braille.  It also has a synthesizer function. The device consists of 6 buttons with which the user can write messages, receive them and talk on the phone.  I recently demonstrated this device at an exhibition organized by our university under the slogan “Science is a strategy for the development of the country”, i visited the Rector of our university and showed him the Braille phone, he recommended to try it firstly among the students who have visual impairments of the University.  My goal now is to set up large-scale production of Braille phones and sell them in foreign markets under the Uzbek brand.  School and university education alone is not enough to become a programmer.  To become a professional, you need to take additional programming courses and work hard.  Of course, it depends on finances.  This can be a problem for girls.  With a deep understanding of these problems, I approached the director of the Agency for Youth Affairs, Alisher Sadullayev, with the initiative to provide opportunities and support for girls who dream of becoming programmers.  Then, with the support of the Agency for Youth Affairs, I opened a women's programming club.  The club unites girls who are interested in programming and specializes in teaching programming to girls, preparing them for various competitions and olympiads.  It currently has about twenty female students.  In the coming days, I want to organize an Olympiad for girls in this area in the region.  This will attract programmers from different parts of the region to the club.

    Makhbuba Salimova also participated in the international tournament ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) with residents of Samarkand State University, which supports start-up projects, and reached the semi-finals. The tournament is the world's leading competition in algorithmic programming, which was attended by the founders of the world's leading IT companies Microsoft, Yandex, Telegram.

    At the same time, Makhbuba is conducting research under the guidance of Rustam Ibodov, professor of theoretical physics, to develop an optimal program for solving differential equations.

Photos taken by Shavkat Akramov,

Information Service of

Samarkand State University.