Center for the Study of Terrorism will open at TPU in the fall of 2021

TOMSK, Jul 16 – RIA Tomsk. Employees of Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) will create a system of early detection of potentially dangerous trends in the social environment and write recommendations on how to counteract radicalization among young people, the university's press service said on Friday.

According to the press service, TPU is implementing a program called "Countering the spread of terrorist and extremist ideology". The university also implements a model of complex integrated system of interaction between specialists of scientific community and law enforcement officers. In September 2021, a Center for the Study of Terrorism, Extremism, Radicalization and Cyber Threats will open on the basis of the TPU School of Core Engineering Education.

"(The Center) will bring together experts and practitioners from different fields. Together, they will work to create a system of early detection of potentially dangerous trends in the social environment and offer recommendations on countermeasures and methods to prevent radicalization among young people", – the university's press service.

The key task of the Center is to create and adapt methods, tools and comprehensive approaches to counter the spread of terrorist ideology and violent extremism.

"The most vulnerable category of the population is psychologically unstable young people. Particular attention in the work of the Center will be aimed at studying the processes of radicalization as a predictor of terrorism, identifying vulnerable categories of young people who are exposed to information and psychological impact from extremist and terrorist communities of various sorts", – university professor Anna Karpova is quoted.

In addition, specialists will continue research in the field of intelligent analysis of social networks in order to study individual and group online radicalization of young people, to interact with partner organizations, to provide advice and expertise.

Earlier it was reported that TPU researchers have developed a methodology for intellectual analysis of destructive far-right-wing content in social networks and software tools for its use.