Gomel resident of the year Yuri Martyanov - about science, metal cord and pedagogical pride

The head of the department “Mobile and technological complexes” of the Gomel State Technical University named after P. O. Sukhoi, Candidate of Technical Sciences Yuri Martyanov in September 2026 became the owner of the title “Gomel citizen of the year”. He is a little over 30, but the list of achievements already includes the President’s Gratitude, membership in the Council of Young Scientists under the Ministry of Education and, no less important, the success of his students.

About the career of a teacher Yuri Vadimovich never dreamed of. The plan was simple: to graduate from Sukhoi State Technical University in the recently opened specialty “metallurgical production and material processing” and go to work for the enterprise. But science intervened first. One conference, the second, reviews, modeling, calculations, experiments, recalls Yuri Martyanov:

- Everyone goes home and I go to the lab. We worked with wire and metal cord, and we used to tape our finger pads all the time, because all the fingers were chipped off. I've been doing samples rolling, testing, measuring, processing statistics. It's such an interesting job!

And then the passion became more serious, resulted in work at the university, a dissertation, the status of the youngest head of the department at the university and an important layer of research. Yuri Martyanov solves the difficult tasks that real production sets for him. I am getting ready to hear a lot of famously twisted terms, but as a good teacher Yuri Vadimovich explains to me the essence of research patiently and on his fingers:

- There is a general tendency to increase the strength of the metal cord. The stronger the cord, the less you can put it in the tire. The tire is lighter, and the fuel consumption and inertia of the machine is less. In addition, the automation of production is now quite high, modern units are used for laying "threads" in the rubber cloth. If the "thread" curve, then the machine must be transferred to manual mode, this reduces its performance. My work was aimed at ensuring that after unwinding from the coil, the structure went smoothly, not arc. To simplify the explanation, Yuri Martyanov figured out how to make the metal cord stronger and straighter. Behind this is an increase in productivity and a good economic effect for production. This development has been implemented and has been successfully used at BMZ for more than five years. Now the head of the department works on other areas of metal cord production and actively attracts students to scientific work. It turns out also a good pedagogical reception, the teacher does not hide:

- This is the most difficult task of our time – to interest young people and keep their attention for longer than 5-10 minutes. I think teachers at all levels of education face this. A student has a phone in his hand, and that’s it. To get it out of there, you have to demonstrate the wonders of technology. We do, of course, but sometimes we have to write boring formulas! But there are, you know, we have a lot of smart guys, it's a real joy for my eyes.

valchenko@sb.by