5 Steps Into the Future SPECIAL ISSUE DEDICATED ISSUE SPECIAL of ANNIVERSARY 5TH the to SCIENCE of INSTITUTE SKOLKOVO the (SKOLTECH) TECHNOLOGY and 2017

Home , Artem Oganov, Grigory Margulis, Tomsk State University

5 steps into the future SPECIAL ISSUE DEDICATED ISSUE SPECIAL OF ANNIVERSARY 5TH THE TO SCIENCE OF INSTITUTE SKOLKOVO THE (SKOLTECH) TECHNOLOGY AND 2017

#GREATSCIENCE #LABS #SPACESYSTEMS #BIOTECH #COGNITIVESCIENCES #SCIENTIFICRESULTS #MULTIDISCIPLINARYAPPROACH #EXCELLENTEDUCATION #BIOINFORMATICS #MATERIALSSCIENCE #OILRECOVERY #DATASCIENCE #PHOTONICS #CHANGINGTHEWORLD #DRONES #QUANTUMMATERIALS #ENERGYGRIDS #DNAEDITING #NANOTECHNOLOGIES #PEOPLECREATE #FORUMS #SCIENCEDRIVENBUSINESS #INNOVATIONS #NEWMATERIALS #STARTUPS #ROBOTS #NEWUNIVERSITY #THEBESTCAMPUS #SKOLKOVOECOSYSTEM #WOMENINSTEM #LABTOMARKET #TECHENTREPRENEURSHIP #FABLAB #SKOLTECH 200 professors 360 postdocs and researchers 1200 MSc and PhD students

great science excellent education changing the world people create new university WORD

DEAR FRIENDS, “Skoltech is a young university, but it has already petitions, and many of them have already launched “When I tell people who are not in the know what Skolk- Usually, universities build experience and acquire tradi- become an important element of the Russian edu- their own startups. ovo is, listing off the elements of its ecosystem, I always say tions over decades or even centuries. And nonetheless, in only cational system insofar as it is implementing a new In parallel, Skolkovo is creating a new edu- Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology first. I do it on five years Skoltech has become one of the leaders of national model of education. It is important for Skoltech to cation hub built on partnerships between three purpose because I firmly believe that Skoltech is the corner- higher education. You don’t have to take my word for it—for transfer scientific developments into practical tech- leading universities: Skoltech, the Moscow stone of our project: the integral part of it that plays a spe- proof, just refer to the objective indicators that measure uni- nological solutions. School of Management Skolkovo and the New cial role in the formation of an innova- versity rankings. There are 4.4 published In five years, Skoltech has become a mature, Economic School. Cooperation between these in- tion-friendly environment. Skoltech is, works per faculty member in publications modern institute, where open and enterprising stitutions is developing in three vectors: science first and foremost, young people: talented, indexed by the Scopus international da- students from all over the world study. These stu- and technology, management and economics. I knowledgeable, and daring. Almost all of tabase, comparable to the leading global dents regularly win prestigious international com- am sure that the interactions between these three them are involved in practical, innovative universities. According to the Nature Pub- institutions will produce results not only for stu- activity, while many have already created lishing Group index, Skoltech occupies dents and professors, but also for the Russian real, “grown-up” startups with sizeable the third place in Russia when it comes economy as a whole. The Skolkovo hub is an in- revenue. That means that the technologies to publications in life sciences journals. In tellectual core, a model that can be replicated, a they’ve developed have proven to be mar- this respect, it trails after such giants as the space where new ideas and projects are born and ketable. Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow developed. Second, Skoltech is professors and lec- State University. Very soon, the institute will move to an in- turers, many of whom are outstanding, I would like to wish staff at the Skolk- credible new campus, which will open even more world-famous scientists. Around 70% of ovo Institute of Science and Technology possibilities. I congratulate you on your five-year the faculty members are our fellow cit- a no less impressive continuation and even anniversary!” izens, having returned to their homeland after working in more explosive successes in its anniversaries to come. Your re- the leading international scientific and academic institutions. search and discoveries, your graduates with all the knowledge Third, Skoltech is amazingly well-equipped and staffed re- and skills necessary to create the digital economy of the future, ARKADY DVORKOVICH search centers and laboratories which, as a matter of fact, have are what our country needs, and what the world needs.” CHAIR OF THE SKOLTECH BOARD been created in partnership with large industrial companies OF TRUSTEES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER like Rosatom, Gazprom Neft, Rosseti, Tatneft, Russian Heli- VICTOR VEKSELBERG OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION copters, and others. PRESIDENT OF THE SKOLKOVO FOUNDATION

SKOLTECH 4 5 5 STEPS INTO THE FUTURE CONTRIBUTORS СТРАТЕГИЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ EDITOR IN CHIEF CONTENTS ALEXANDER ZOLOTAREV PRODUCER INESSA GRIGALYUNENE ART DIRECTOR EKATERINA KHOLMOGOROVA EXECUTIVE EDITOR STRATEGY ELENA BARINOVA Skoltech: Past. Present. Future EDITOR PAGE 6 KSENIA NAUMOVA WRITER AT LARGE INGRID BURKE SKOLTECH+ Faces. Comments. Projects. Collaborations. Teams STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER VITALY SHUSTIKOV PAGE 12 PROOFREADER GALINA DANILOVA #1_GREAT SCIENCE PHOTOS ELIZAVETA AZAROVA Labs. Research. Scientific results EVGENY PELEVIN PAGE 16 PAVEL SAMOKHVALOV MAXIM STULOV/VEDOMOSTI EVGENY TSIKUNOV EVGENY GURKO #2_EXCELLENT EDUCATION VIKTOR FEDORCHUK Discourse. Educational Programs. Interviews. Reports ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE 58 YULIA BLUCHER ALEXANDRA KUZNETSOVA MARINA MALYSHEVA ALEKSANDRA SLOWIK #3_CHANGING THE WORLD Success stories. Lab to market. Startups. Conferences. Projects INTERVIEWS PAGE 158 ALINA CHERNOVA POLINA IVAKINA DIANA ROSHCHINA ALEXANDER MURAKHOVSKY #4_PEOPLE CREATE VALERY SOBOLEV People. Opinions. Close ups TRANSLATION PAGE 214 NATALIA MAXIMOVA GRACE CUDDIHY HARRISON GRADY FRANCES RANSOME #5_NEW UNIVERSITY New campus. New space. New era PAGE 250 © Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) 143026, Moscow, Nobel str. 3 Tel. +7 (495) 280 14 81 www.skoltech.ru Circulation 500 copies 7 СТРАТЕГИЯ STRATEGY Skoltech: Past. Present. Future –ALEXANDER KULESHOV–

SKOLTECH 8 9 5 STEPS INTO THE FUTURE STRATEGY

he Skolkovo Institute of Science and form these results into industrial, high-demand and knowledge with leadership skills, technologi- Technology, one of the most important Skoltech’s primary task products. cal ingenuity and incredible bravery and willpow- parts of the Skolkovo project, was for- is to locate and foster next- In addition, it is important to understand how er, self-confidence and determination to take their mally established six years ago. Then, technology-fueled lifestyle shifts have gathered ideas to fruition, making the world a better place. five years ago, in 2012, the first students generation leaders who are momentum in the past ten to twenty years: profes- Of course, humanity has not changed much over were accepted, but for natural reasons the institute talented, well educated, sional skills considered essential only several years the past several centuries and people have always could only fully begin its work in mid-2015. By that ago are becoming unnecessary as we speak. Profes- been this way, but in today’s world an environment time, many bureaucratic problems had been re- ambitious and capable sionals with entrepreneurial talent are beginning has emerged that gave them the opportunity to ful- solved; we had obtained facilities to accommodate of looking beyond the limits to play a leading role in the world. I will not list fill themselves. And one of our country’s main tasks our educational and research processes, assembled the household names of all of the people who have is to try to create that type of environment and fos- a critical mass of highly qualified faculty and ac- of today’s reality transformed the world before our eyes. Their main ter those kinds of people here in Russia. Skoltech quired the minimal amount of equipment necessary distinction from the managers of former genera- is a pioneering organization for our country, and in to begin meaningful activity. Here, I would like to tions is their combination of professional talents the not-too-distant future I hope that it will become express my gratitude to the first Rector of Skoltech, one of the leading scientific educational organiza- Professor Edward Crawley, who was able to over- from traditional educational institutions that have, tions in the world as well. We have every reason come a colossal amount of professional and bureau- over the centuries, successfully fulfilled their func- to think it will: our publishing activity has already cratic obstacles at the outset. That took willpower tions of mass and elite education, of fundamental reached the levels of the leading young internation- and professionalism, which Ed, as it turned out, had and applied research? al universities and we conduct applied research in in abundance. Skoltech’s global mission is to foster A qualitative distinction between third-genera- the fields of biotechnology, energy, data science, a scientific and technological elite for Russia and tion universities and traditional universities consists the world, to train specialists and create technolo- in the former’s organic integration of an innovative gies as a basis for our country’s transition to a new element into research and educational activity, and type of economy, becoming an active participant in the training of multidisciplinary research teams. In Skolkovo.AI the global digital revolution currently under way. other words, training specialists who are not only CONFERENCE Skoltech President, In order to achieve this, it was necessary to cre- capable of carrying out research and development RAS Academician ate the first “third generation” university in Russia; in cooperation with specialists of different fields Alexander Kuleshov a University 3.0. What exactly is new about this? of knowledge, but also seeing market potential in pictured opening What distinguishes third-generation universities their activity and possessing the ability to trans- the plenary session

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Taking into account and quantum technologies, which should lead to Skoltech is a pioneering technological advances world-class breakthroughs not only from a purely scientific perspective, but also in the creation of organization for our country, and experience, six priority new products that will change life in our country areas have been formed as and the world. and in the not-too-distant future part of the third That is why Skoltech’s primary task is to locate I hope that it will become one of and foster next-generation leaders who are talent- stage of the institute’s ed, well educated, ambitious and capable of look- the leading scientific educational development in 2018-2020: ing beyond the limits of today’s reality, confident organizations in the world Data Sciences and Artificial visionaries and dreamers who I am certain will define our future. Intelligence; Life Sciences One of Skoltech’s most important goals in the and Biomedicine; Modern near future is to reduce our dependence on gov- Methods of Engineering ernment financial support, which, in our view, is and the Non-Conventional eminently attainable. We have already achieved a aware that the majority of Skoltech graduates are lot to that end. in demand at the best international universities and Materials; Energy But not everything has gone as smoothly as we companies, but we want them to give back the en- Efficiency; Quantum would like. One of the fundamental problems, the tire force of their intellect and education obtained Technologies; and very existence of which we cannot and will not tol- at Skoltech here and now. For that reason, in the erate, is brain drain. “big Skolkovo” ecosystem (“Skolkovo is not a terri- Advanced Studies Of course, science is international and we cer- tory, but an ideology,” said Zhores Alferov, Nobel tainly welcome internships, student exchanges at laureate and Co-Chairman of the Skolkovo Foun- various levels of postgraduate study, and travel to dation Scientific Advisory Council) we need to do conferences, because today that is the only way to everything in our power to establish an atmosphere foster the world-class leaders that our country is of creativity for our students, an atmosphere of in such great need of. But nonetheless, it must be passion for success, an atmosphere of professional understood that our goal is to foster the scientific mutual understanding, without which no techno- and technological elite of our country. We are fully logical achievements are possible today.

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RUPERT GERZER

SKOLTECH PROVOST, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR TRANSLATIONAL BIOMEDICINE, PROFESSOR

The City of Moscow is currently in the process of establishing the Moscow International Medical Clus- ter, as well as a new Biotech Park at the Skolkovo Innovation Center. Skoltech strongly supports these initiatives and is prepared to spearhead close collaborations with the new international healthcare provid- ers in all respective fields. The institute is currently intensifying its translational biomedicine activities. ALEXANDER CHERNOV Skoltech will also offer joint educational programs. This initiative will have a strong impact on the future SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT FOR EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS fields of Skoltech activities. OF THE SKOLKOVO FOUNDATION

In a very short time, Skoltech managed to carve out an absolutely unique niche in the Russian higher education system. Our country has many universities where students Elements can receive a quality education in engineering and economics. But at present, it appears to be the case that Skoltech alone can provide its students with the complete scope of knowledge needed by researchers, developers and man- of an agers involved in technological entrepreneurship. These are the professions that are critical for Russia’s innovative Ecosystem development, and for the creation of the digital economy. SKOLTECH 14 15 5 STEPS INTO THE FUTURE СТРАТЕГИЯ SKOLTECH +

ALEXANDER SAFONOV

ALEXEI SITNIKOV VICE PRESIDENT FOR DEVELOPMENT VICE PRESIDENT FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT One of Skoltech’s priorities is to engage young talent in the world of big science and cutting-edge technologies. Skoltech is an essential element and the intellectual nucleus We place an enormous emphasis on work with highly gifted of the Skolkovo ecosystem. Professors, researchers, and junior high and high school students. Cooperation has already students actively participate in the Innovation Center’s key been developed with the Sirius Educational Center and the events: the annual Open Innovations Forum, the Startup Skolkovo International Gymnasium, which started the academic Village festival held each summer, and the Skolkovo Jazz year in a beautiful new building not far from Skoltech. Universi- Festival. Next year, Skoltech will move into its new home, ty graduate students and professors give lectures and immerse possibly the most state-of-the-art university campus in the students in project work. In addition, Skoltech conducted a pi- world, built by the acclaimed architectural firm Herzog & lot school in physics, molecular biology, and bioinformatics for de Meuron. Today, Skolkovo is actively pursuing a new undergraduate students this past summer. Several dozen bril- initiative: the Skolkovo educational hub. It is composed of liant students from various Russian and international cities par- three universities located in close proximity to one another: ticipated. Classes were led by world-class professors not only Skoltech, the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, and from Skoltech, but also from some of our international partner the New Economic School. They collaborate on educational universities, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the and research programs for the benefit of the Russian econo- Weizmann Institute, Stony Brook University, and many others. my, and for the benefit of the country as a whole. We will definitely continue this work in the future.

SKOLTECH 16 17 5 STEPS INTO THE FUTURE СТРАТЕГИЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ #GREATSCIENCE #LABS t #PUBLICATIONS #CUTTINGEDGERESEARCH #SCIENTIFICRESULTS re a g science ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDRA KUZNETSOVA ALEXANDRA BY ILLUSTRATION

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20 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS NEUROSCIENCE The human brain 29 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS QUANTUM PHYSICS, COMPUTER SCIENCE and the primate brain are more different than we thought A new look at quantum computers and A.I.

21 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS COGNITIVE SCIENCES Eye movements give away the decisions we make 33 LABORATORIES ELECTROCHEMICAL ENERGY STORAGE LABS

Inorganic perovskite solar cells 22 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS RENEWABLE ENERGY 34 LABORATORIES DESIGN MANUFACTURING AND MATERIALS LABS are becoming more efficient

23 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS PROTEOMICS IN SPACE Weightlessness affects 38 LABORATORIES CONCURRENT ENGINEERING DESIGN LAB astronauts’ health at the molecular level

41 LABORATORIES HYBRID PHOTONICS LAB 24 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS GEOCHEMISTRY Iron carbonates in the deep Earth help form diamonds

45 LABORATORIES HYDROCARBON RECOVERY LAB 25 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS BIOMEDICINE Scientists explore a new mechanism for liver cell regeneration 46 LABORATORIES INTELLIGENT SPACE ROBOTICS LAB 26 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS BIOTECHNOLOGY New Trojan Horse antibiotic to help treat bacterial infections 49 LABORATORIES LABORATORY FOR MASS SPECTROMETRY

27 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS COMPUTER VISION Skoltech scientists learn to manipulate human gaze in the images 53 LABORATORIES ENERGY SYSTEMS LABS

28 SCIENTIFIC RESULTS CHEMISTRY Scientists predict two stable compounds of the most inert element of the periodic table: helium 56 LABORATORIES NANOMATERIALS LAB

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n international group of scientists from Russia, China and Germany led by esearchers from Skoltech and Tomsk State University in Russia and the University Skoltech Professor Philipp Khaitovich examined new gene expression features of Oregon in the United States used a mobile eye-tracking system to study the in different layers of the prefrontal cortex of the human brain and compared decision-making process. Scientists were able to observe how socialization affects their findings with chimpanzee and macaque brains. decision-making and levels of cooperation between participants. The well-known The scientists arrived at the conclusion that despite significant similarities game theory problem, the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” involves cooperation between between human and primate brains, the neocortex microarchitecture underwent rapid and two players. Two people are caught after committing a crime. Each is faced with a choice: substantial changes during the course of the human evolutionary process. testify against his or her accomplice, or keep silent. If both remain silent, they will both receive The study of human cognitive abilities is a key priority in the fields of medicine and neu- the minimum term of six months behind bars. If both testify against each other, both will be robiology. But little is known about just how evolution changed the functional organization imprisoned for two years. But if one testifies against the other, and the other remains silent, the of the human brain. betrayer is released, and the silent one is sentenced to 10 years in prison. It would seem mathe- Each of the six layers of the prefrontal cortex carries out special functions in information matically correct to always betray. But people are social by nature, that is, inclined to cooperate. processing, distributing different types of cells and organizing the links between them. Early joint studies by Skoltech and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology demon- The scientists analyzed the RNA of sections of the prefrontal neocortex of the cerebral strated that a group of strangers participating in the Prisoner’s Dilemma only opted to cooper- cortex of humans, chimpanzees and macaques. More than 2,320 genes were identified, new ate in about 20% of cases. However, even brief social interactions between players increased markers of neocortex layers unique to humans. Their cooperation rates to levels similar to those achieved between friends. During the experiment, research revealed some 367 human genes operate in a the behavior of participants was studied using a mobile eye-tracking system (SMI Eye Tracking completely different layer of the neocortex than those Glasses v. 1.8). Scientists compared the oculomotor activity of 12 participants during the first THE HUMAN BRAIN of chimpanzees. Only 133 similar genes were discovered part of the experiment when they did not yet know each other, and AND THE PRIMATE in chimpanzees, compared to macaques, despite the fact during the second part, following social interactions. They deter- that considerably more time has passed since the evo- mined that an increase in the total time period of looking and the EYE MOVEMENTS BRAIN ARE MORE lutionary division of the chimpanzee and the macaque time of gaze fixation on non-cooperative advantages are inherent DIFFERENT THAN than of the chimpanzee and the human. Knowledge of to “defectors” — people who choose a betrayal strategy. Follow- GIVE AWAY the unique features of gene expression in different layers ing social interactions, the perception of material stimuli chang- THE DECISIONS WE THOUGHT of the human prefrontal cortex make it possible to devel- es: the decision-making process is accompanied by the increased op new means of regulating human cognitive functions, frequency of fixations on specific strategies and a reduction of WE MAKE – Philipp Khaitovich – for instance, in cases of brain pathologies and aging. their duration, as well as greater frequency of coordinated eye – Olga Efimova – – Tatyana Babkina – THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN movements and their decreased total length.

NATURE NEUROSCIENCE JOURNAL MALYSHEVA MARINA BY ILLUSTRATION MALYSHEVA MARINA BY ILLUSTRATION THE RESULTS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN PLOS ONE JOURNAL

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cientists from Skoltech, the Institute of Problems of Chemical Phys- cientists from Russia and Canada analyzed the effect ics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University of spaceflight conditions on protein make-up in blood have explored the potential of fully inorganic perovskite solar cells. samples of 18 cosmonauts who lived on the Interna- WEIGHTLESSNESS The fabricated devices delivered power conversion efficiency (PCE) tional Space Station for an extended period of time. AFFECTS of 10.5%. Professor Evgeny Nikolaev of Skoltech and the Mos- “These results demonstrate the high potential of inorganic integrated halides, which cow Institute of Physics and Technology initiated the research. We ASTRONAUTS’ creates potentially new possibilities for the design of new photovoltaic materials know that space conditions influence metabolism, muscle activity, HEALTH AT THE for effective and stable perovskite solar cells,” says Pavel Troshin, a professor with the respiration system, and many other bodily functions, but the Skoltech’s Center for Electrochemical Energy Storage. molecular mechanisms behind these processes have yet to be exam- MOLECULAR LEVEL Thus far, PCE power conversion in hybrid organic-inorganic perovskite solar ined. The research team analyzed concentrations of 125 proteins – Evgeny Nikolaev – cells has reached 22%. The high effectiveness, low costs and simplicity of produc- in the blood plasma of astronauts, who were tested 30 days prior ing hybrid perovskite solar cells make it one of the most promising technologies to their flights, directly after their return to Earth, and seven days of photovoltaic cells. But hybrid integrated iodoplumbates easily undergo rapid later. Protein concentrations were measured using a mass spectrometer. Scientists found thermal and photochemical decomposition, which challenges their practical im- proteins with concentrations that remained unchanged, that changed but recovered rap- plementation in solar modules. idly to normal levels, and that recovered very slowly. “The proteins tested are a set of The most effective approach in the creation of sta- biomarkers used to identify noncommunicable diseases. The results showed ble perovskite materials appears to be the full replace- that in weightlessness, the immune system acts like it does when infect- ment of organic with inorganic cations. For instance, ed, because the human body doesn’t know what to do and tries to INORGANIC inorganic solar cells demonstrated a conversion ef- turn on all possible defense systems,” said Professor Nikolaev. ficiency of just 2-3%, but this study recognized the Evolution hasn’t prepared us for the changes that take place PEROVSKITE possibility of substantially increasing these figures. in the human body during spaceflight. It is unknown if the hu- SOLAR CELLS ARE “We have conclusively demonstrated the possibil- man body has mechanisms responsible for rapid adaptation to BECOMING MORE ity of creating highly effective solar cells with a pla- such serious changes in its living conditions. The results of the nar heterotransition based on CsPbI3 films obtained study indicate that these mechanisms likely do not exist, which EFFICIENT through the thermal co-evaporation of cesium and is why adaptations take place in all major types of human cells, lead iodides,” says Pavel Troshin. organs, and tissues. – Pavel Troshin – THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN NATURE

IN NATURE JOURNAL MALYSHEVA MARINA BY ILLUSTRATION MALYSHEVA MARINA BY ILLUSTRATION SCIENTIFIC REPORTS JOURNAL

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n international group of scientists including researchers from Russia cientists from Skoltech, the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Regenerative (Leyla Ismailova, research scientist at the Skoltech Center for Hydrocar- Medicine in Scotland, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the bon Recovery), France, Germany, Italy and the United States, discovered United States have, for the first time, demonstrated the role of cholangiocytes surprising particularities in the behavior of iron carbonates in conditions (epithelial bile duct cells) in liver regeneration. The results of their study are of high temperatures and extremely high pressure in the Earth’s man- highly useful for regenerative medicine and the fight against liver disease. tle. Diamonds extracted from depths of some 700 km. bear inclusions that contain The liver is one of the few organs in the human body that is capable of regenerating. In the carbonates, providing direct evidence that carbonates exist at such depths. Scientists event of liver damage as a result of trauma or chronic disease, the main liver cells – hepato- revealed that under these extreme conditions, carbonate structure is reorganized: the cytes, which are responsible for all basic liver functions – are able to regenerate by dividing carbon carries an extra carbon atom, forming a tetrahedral shape. into new hepatocytes. Stimulation of liver regeneration is an acute problem for medical prac- Pressure deep in the Earth is equivalent to more than one million times the pres- titioners and researchers, but the details of this mechanism and whether other types of he- sure of Earth’s atmosphere, and temperatures reach 2,200° Celsius. Most chemical patic cells are involved in the process of the formation of new hepatocytes remains unclear. compounds cannot exist under such conditions. To simulate deep mantle condi- An international group of scientists used transgenic mice as test subjects; in doing tions, the team generated high pressure and temperatures using laser-heated dia- so, they managed to simulate liver damage common to humans. At the same time, mond anvil cells. The team then used synchrotron X-rays to examine the content the ability of hepatocytes to divide was intentionally reduced in order to evaluate the and the structure of the samples at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility contribution of other liver cells to regeneration. As a result it was shown that bile in France and the Advanced Photon Source in the United duct epithelial cells – cholangiocytes – are involved in the regeneration of hepato- States, which made it possible to analyze the composition cytes. Also, scientists suggest that the potential for regeneration in hepatocytes de- IRON and structure of the samples. rived from cholangiocytes may be higher CARBONATES The results of their work indicate that one of the new than in normal hepatocytes. crystal structures is uncommonly stable and retains its “The Scottish Center for Regenerative SCIENTISTS EXPLORE IN THE DEEP structure under the conditions present in the earth’s man- Medicine... is beginning work aimed at EARTH HELP tle, to depths of 2,500 km – close to where the mantle isolating and transplanting autologous A NEW MECHANISM meets the earth’s core. cholangiocytes to patients with cirrho- FOR LIVER CELL FORM Through the process of self-oxidation, carbonates can sis,” said Yuri Kotelevtsev, deputy direc- DIAMONDS remain preserved deep in the Earth’s mantle, thereby con- tor of the Skoltech Center for Transla- REGENERATION tributing to diamond formation. tional Biomedicine. – Yuri Kotelevtsev – – Leyla Ismailova – THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN

IN NATURE COMMUNICATIONS JOURNALV BLUCHER YULIA BY ILLUSTRATION BLUCHER YULIA BY ILLUSTRATION PUBLISHED IN NATURE JOURNAL

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cientists from Skoltech and the Institute of Gene Biology (Russian Academy cientists from the Skoltech Computer Vision Group, led by professor Victor of Sciences) in collaboration with their colleagues from Belgium, led by Lempitsky, have developed an algorithm that can change the direction of Skoltech Professor Konstantin Severinov, have described a new antibiotic the gaze in images and video in real time. that, like the Trojan Horse, penetrates inactive bacterial cells and, once During video conferences (for example, on Skype), inside, becomes toxic and destroys them. The substance described by the both parties are usually looking at the screen but not scientists was found in the bacteria Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. at the camera, leading to a slightly downward gaze. Often this SKOLTECH SCIENTISTS The new antibiotic has a number of advantages over previously studied Trojan hors- inhibits the sensation of a real conversation. A similar problem LEARN TO es. “At first the antibiotic was predicted by means of bioinformatics,” said Severinov, is faced by television announcers, who must simultaneously read who serves as director of the Skoltech Center for Data Intensive Medicine and Biotech- texts and look at the audience. MANIPULATE nology. “The new compound acts through a Trojan horse mechanism but has a unique The system developed by the Skoltech scientists requires only HUMAN GAZE chemical structure that allows the new drug to inhibit the growth of cells that have a basic digital camera. It is based on deep neural networks (deep acquired resistance to certain antibiotics. These findings highlight the importance of learning), a machine learning method that recently led to several IN THE IMAGES DNA sequence mining for uncovering novel bioactive compounds and may lead to the breakthroughs in computer vision, speech recognition and natural – Victor Lempitsky – development of new antibacterial drugs in the future.” language processing. – Yaroslav Ganin – Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest problems in modern healthcare. One of “First, we localize the eye region in the input frame. This data, these antibiotics is microcin C, a prototypical Trojan horse antibiotic produced by along with the angle used to correct the direction of the gaze, en- several strains of E. Coli bacteria to fight other bacteria. Inside ter into the deep neural network,” explains study author Yaroslav the sensitive target cell, microcin C breaks down, producing a Ganin. “This in turn produces a so-called ‘displacement field,’ that toxic substance that inhibits protein synthesis and prevents cell is, a deformation that needs to be applied to the input image to NEW TROJAN growth. The new compound described in this study is similar to receive the correct image. Hence the name of the method: Deep- HORSE ANTIBIOTIC microcin C, but one of its main particularities is its specialized Warp.” TO HELP TREAT chemical modifications that reduce the probability of antibiotic DeepWarp is one of several projects developed by Victor Lempit- resistance development. sky’s group, dedicated to image synthesis using neural networks. BACTERIAL The research, carried out in Severinov’s laboratory, expands This field has enormous practical potential. For instance, the gaze INFECTIONS the known range of antibiotics produced by bacteria and makes manipulation project can be used in the photo and motion picture possible the development of new antibiotics. industry as a post-processing tool.

– Konstantin Severinov – THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN THE JOURNAL THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PRESENTED AT THE 14TH EUROPEAN OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY SLOWIK ALEKSANDRA BY ILLUSTRATION SLOWIK ALEKSANDRA BY ILLUSTRATION CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER VISION IN AMSTERDAM

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n international team of researchers led by Skoltech Professor Artem R. Oganov nformation is not an entirely virtual entity; it must be stored in a physical medium. In- (head of the Computational Materials Discovery laboratory at the Moscow Insti- formation processing devices like computers and smartphones are therefore governed tute of Physics and Technology) has predicted two stable helium compounds– by the laws of physics. Consequently, the physical limits of machine learning abilities

Na2He and Na2He O. This work could hold clues about the chemistry occurring in are governed by the laws of physics. planetary depths or even stars where helium plays a key role. As the best-known theory of physics is quantum theory, it must therefore be used to Helium is the second most abundant element (after hydrogen) in the universe, and determine the absolute physical limits of a machine’s ability to learn. also the most inert. It has no stable compounds under normal conditions. The authors of A quantum algorithm is a multi-step procedure performed on a quantum computer the study conducted a systematic search of stable helium compounds using the USPEX to solve a certain problem, such as searching a database. Quantum machine learning

evolutionary algorithm. They predicted the Na2He compound, which was successfully software makes use of quantum algorithms to process information in ways that classi- synthesized in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) experiment conducted at the Carnegie Insti- cal computers cannot. This opens up entirely new possibilities and prospects. The effect tution for Science in Washington by Professor Alexander Goncharov and his colleagues. quantum computers are able to achieve is called quantum enhanced machine learning. The compound appears at pressures of about 1.1 million times Earth’s atmospheric pres- Machine learning is widely used in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, particle physics

sure and is predicted to remain stable at least up to 10 million atmospheres. Na2He and many other fields. Thanks to the ability to adapt to new data, machine learning great- is a special type of an ionic salt-like crystal called ly exceeds the ability of people. Despite this, machine learning cannot cope with certain an electride. In these crystals, the role of the cat- difficult tasks. Quantum enhancement is expected to help tackle tasks ranging from opti- SCIENTISTS ion sublattice is assumed by sodium, while localized mization to neural network learning. electron pairs assume the role of anion. Because elec- In the new paper published in Nature, a group of scientists led by Skoltech Associate

PREDICT TWO trons are strongly localized, Na2He cannot conduct Professor Jacob Biamonte outlines the necessary steps to make quantum an electric current. Another compound, Na He O, was enhanced machine learning possible in practice. STABLE COMPOUNDS 2 found to be stable in the pressure range from 0.15 to Many researchers have thought that the primary applications of quan- OF THE MOST 1.1 million atmospheres. tum computers would be the use of quantum computers to simulate chem- A NEW LOOK INERT ELEMENT “Our study once again illustrates how little is ical physics, which can be used in the pharmaceutical industry for drug AT QUANTUM known today about the influence of extreme condi- discovery. OF THE PERIODIC tions on chemistry, and the role of these phenomena “Early on the team spent all night on Skype debating what our field of study COMPUTERS TABLE: HELIUM inside planets has yet to be explored,” says Professor even was. Ultimately we ended up writing three versions over eight months AND A.I. Oganov. with nothing more than the title in common,” said Jacob Biamonte.

– Artem Oganov – THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN – Jacob Biamonte –

NATURE CHEMISTRY JOURNAL KUZNETSOVA ALEXANDRA BY ILLUSTRATION KUZNETSOVA ALEXANDRA BY ILLUSTRATION THE RESULTS OF THIS STUDY HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN NATURE JOURNAL

30 31 GREAT SCIENCE At Skoltech’s heart

are its world-class laboratories, where brilliant minds and the most advanced equipment meet LaSKOLTECH 32 bs33 GREAT SCIENCE LABORATORIESСТРАТЕГИЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ

CENTER FOR ELECTROCHEMICAL ENERGY STORAGE

Electrochemical Energy Storage Labs

The CEES performs cutting-edge research in several emerging fields focused on the generation of innovative products, including: the development of efficient technologies for solar energy conversion based on a conceptually new organic and perovskite solar cells; the design of innovative organic materials and large-scale redox flow systems for stationary bulk energy storage, e.g. to meet the needs of solar and wind power plants; the design of a new generation of metal-ion batteries (lithium, sodium, potassium, magnesium) with record-breaking capacities and long-term operation stability. Skoltech PhD and MSc students are actively engaged in all of the lab’s research projects.

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CENTER FOR DESIGN, MANUFACTURING AND MATERIALS

Design, Manufacturing and Materials Labs

The CDMM conducts basic and applied research aimed at developing and implementing new design and manufacturing concepts, and creating advanced, lightweight and reliable materials and structures with enhanced lifecycles to meet the demands of various industries. The Center’s key research and education areas include: composite materials and structures; additive manufacturing and coating technologies; information technologies for advanced manufacturing; and micro- and nano-mechanics.

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SKOLTECH 38 39 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ СТРАТЕГИЯ LABORATORIESСТРАТЕГИЯ

SPACE CENTER

Concurrent Engineering Design Lab

The Space Center lab aims for excellence in education, research and innovation. Students, faculty and researchers at the lab conduct studies on the newest methods of space exploration and remote sensing, including with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. The lab’s goal is to implement cutting-edge technological developments with the help of partners in industry. Students in the program are actively involved in the creation of small satellites, from mission development to flight tests using CubeSat technology.

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CENTER FOR PHOTONICS & QUANTUM MATERIALS

Hybrid Photonics Lab

Hybrid photonics, an emerging research area at the interface between traditional optoelectronics and quantum technologies, spans a vast array of fields, ranging from fundamental to applied studies. In the Skoltech Hybrid Photonics labs, we aim to bridge the gap between fundamental research of novel hybrid structures and phenomena, and the development of ground-breaking applications with wide ranging societal impacts. One of our major goals is the creation of an analogue Hamiltonian simulator platform that is capable of solving real life optimization problems faster than classical computers.

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SKOLTECH 44 45 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ СТРАТЕГИЯ LABORATORIESСТРАТЕГИЯ

CENTER FOR HYDROCARBON RECOVERY

Hydrocarbon Recovery Lab

Skoltech unveiled its Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery’s new state-of-the-art laboratory on 6 June 2017. The new lab is devoted to research and development of technologies for producing oil and gas that cannot be extracted using traditional methods – so-called hard to recover and unconventional resources, including brown- fields, heavy oil, tight oil, carbonate and low permeable reservoirs and gas hydrates forma- tions. Scientists will study the processes that occur in hydrocarbon reservoirs at depths up to several kilometers, and apply the results of their research to develop new solutions for the production of conventional and unconventional resources.

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SPACE CENTER

Intelligent Space Robotics Lab

The Intelligent Space Robotics lab conducts research across a vast spectrum of robotics-related fields. Students and researchers associated with the lab have created warehouse automation solutions using both drones and mobile robots, launched an open self-driving car platform, created a technology for automated smartphone disas- sembly and constructed their own manipulators. They have also won numerous awards and hon- ors, including the national Eurobot champion- ship two years in a row.

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SPACE CENTER Laboratory for Mass Spectrometry This lab aims to create new types of mass spec- trometers and to pioneer cutting edge mass spectrometry research methods. It also conducts research aimed at contributing to medical research via the development of technologies of analyzing complex chemical and biochemical mixtures. In particular, this pertains to research in the fields of neurosurgery, gynecology, and pediatrics, pul- monology, and oncology, and in agriculture in studies of plants and seeds with the aim of finding high performance crops and combating disease. The lab also serves as the site of the joint Skoltech-MIT Next Generation project aimed at creating a mass spectrometer for use in space exploration, as well as for everyday life.

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SKOLTECH 52 53 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ СТРАТЕГИЯ LABORATORIESСТРАТЕГИЯ

CENTER FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS

Energy Systems Labs

The Energy Systems Lab conducts research, integrated with education and innovation, in the field of electric and heat power. The lab’s setup allows for the simultaneous use of installations for the realization of a single project in these two areas. There are several on-going projects that are generating new intellectual property in power electronics, automation and control of smart heating systems, smart grids and thermal engineering, as well as in the field of electrical network equipment diagnostics.

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SKOLTECH 56 57 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ LABORATORIESСТРАТЕГИЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ

CENTER FOR PHOTONICS & QUANTUM MATERIALS

Nanomaterials Lab

The Nanomaterials Laboratory conducts research in the field of synthesis of single-walled carbon nanotubes, two-dimensional nanomaterials and nanowires of metal oxides, as well as their applications in such fields as transparent and flexible electronics, photovoltaics, gas sensors, photonics, biotechnology, etc. The scientific group offers a unique environment for interdisciplinary research, has a reputation as a reliable partner in the field of high-tech research, and is among the best laboratories in the world.

SKOLTECH 58 59 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ СТРАТЕГИЯ СТРАТЕГИЯ#EXCELLENTEDUCATION #MASTERSPROGRAM #PHDPROGRAM #STUDYABROAD #STUDENTLIFE #MASTERSKAYA #UNIVERSITY24/7 excellent education

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62 DISCOURSE ISKANDER AKHATOV: //One can design an entire engine 102 DISCOURSE MICHAEL CHERTKOV: //I like our students. They’re well and test it using its virtual digital prototype// rounded, highly educated and motivated to learn more//

106 UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE WHY DID I CHOOSE SKOLTECH? 66 DISCOURSE ILDAR GABITOV: //Biophotonics aims to study the building First-year students share their impressions blocks of all living systems and extend human life//

110 MASTERSKAYA A MODEL KIT 70 DISCOURSE MIKHAIL GELFAND: //High evolutionary biology is the science that attempts to explain how exactly things turned 116 INTERVIEW DZMITRY TSETSERUKOU: //A country with a low out like this// population density and a huge territory must be fully automated//

74 DISCOURSE KONSTANTIN SEVERINOV: //Biology needs sharp 120 INTERVIEW VLADIMIR SPOKOINY: //Entire areas of knowledge are minds, computers and, after everything else, labs// starting to die out//

//Students from Vladivostok now have the 78 DISCOURSE ANDRIY ZHUGAEVICH: //The global focus of materials 126 INTERVIEW ANTON KROTOV: science has shifted to the nano scale// chance to study bioinformatics, functional genomics, and genetic engineering//

82 DISCOURSE ANTON IVANOV: //New commercial space programs are 130 EXPEDITION SKOLTECH TEAM CONDUCTS CUTTING EDGE entering orbit// RESEARCH IN ANTARCTICA

86 DISCOURSE IGOR KRICHEVER://Mathematical physics classes demand 138 INTERVIEW PEKKA VILJAKAINEN: //The only way we can keep the twice the knowledge// best people in the Skolkovo ecosystem is by having the best ecosystem//

90 DISCOURSE MAXIM FEDOROV: //Fundamental research in machine learning has set its sights on a new goal: multitasking// 142 INTERVIEW NINA MAZYAVKINA: //I made up my mind — new city, new college, new start — just go for it//

98 DISCOURSE ALEXEY CHEREMISIN: //It’s normal for companies to 150 INTERVIEW DENIS STOLYAROV: //We support any productive student select the best people and train them virtually from grade school// initiative and provide resources//

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Iskander Akhatov: // One can design an entire engine and test it using its virtual digital prototype//

The Director of the Skoltech study of the physical and mechanical it cools leaving a lot of voids, or pores Center for Design, Manufacturing, properties of materials in large-scale in it. This porosity, ultimately, affects and Materials and Head of the engineering structures. There are two mechanical characteristics of the engi- Advanced and Digital Engineering fundamental problems faced by the neering structure. The physics of the Technologies MSc program tells industry that are important in terms formation of these pores has not been us about the fundamental objec- of the application of physics and me- fully understood. Therefore, it remains tives of materials science. chanics to materials science, both be- unclear how to deal with them. ing the subject of research of the Mi- This fundamental problem can aterials science is a broad cro- and Nano-Mechanics laboratory only be solved by interdisciplinary concept. If anything, it’s in our center. The first is the problem research that spans mechanics, phys- probably not a science so of prediction of mechanical properties ics, computational and applied math- much as the application of composite materials. When a com- ematics. When engineering structures of various sciences: me- posite material is formed, a porous are made of composite materials, one chanics, physics, chemistry, and math- matrix of bundles of fibers is saturated needs to know their final mechanical ematics. Our center is devoted to the with a resin, which is polymerized as characteristics. We can’t build an air-

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If you only rely plane wing or a part for a car if we don’t and Structures laboratory where we de- virtually. This approach drastically re- launching this technology into Russian know what loads they will be able to han- velop and study new manufacturing produces the time spent on manufacturing industry. on mechanical dle. Therefore, porosity is an important cesses for creating composite materials new objects. Other applied laboratories closely co- testing, you will fundamental problem that needs to be and objects from them. For example, if If you want to manufacture a car operate with PLM: whatever data on the addressed. It is important to understand you want to build a bridge, you can use and only opt for mechanical testing, properties of materials we obtain is en- test it, break it, where it comes from and find ways to cast iron profiles or composite materials. you will test it, break it, make it, and tered into the PLM database, which col- eliminate or minimize its effect. They can be made using a special method test it again. But with PLM technolo- lects this information for use in subse- make it, and test The second problem is observed in – pultrusion – and they will be stronger gy, you can conduct initial tests on a quent designs. This is really a step into the it again spraying or coating processes of addi- than steel. computer and then go on to make a fi- future. This is what is happening all over tive manufacturing. Usually a spray gun Our second laboratory is devoted to nal sample. PLM is widely used in the the world. FARDAD AZARMI is used to coat a solid object by spraying the study of additive technologies. The aerospace industry, where experiments In 2016, we put together our very first PROFESSOR AT THE SKOLTECH an aerosol and coating the surface. Small majority of our work is linked to 3D are extremely expensive. We are now group of 17 students. In 2017, we only plan CENTER FOR DESIGN, droplets, when hit a solid object, are not printing using different materials. Poly- trying to build a laboratory so that to accept about 20. After all, we are not MANUFACTURING AND MATERIALS always arranged evenly on the surface mers are the simplest of all as they are Skoltech can become a springboard for tasked with making a large-scale course. and, when cooled, form an uneven, po- easily melted down and can be pulled. rous object. Again, the porosity has a sig- Metal is a more complex material be- nificant impact on the protective proper- cause it requires a laser beam to melt it The Advanced and Digital Engi- ties of the film coating and its durability. down. Ceramics are the next most diffi- neering Technologies Master’s program was established with a focus To understand how to avoid heterogene- cult material. They are one of our most The Advanced and Digital Engineering Technologies Master’s program This program attracts students with fundamental knowledge in the fields of mathematics, on the development and imple- ity, make the coating durable and imbue it promising areas of focus. physics, and engineering. The comprehensive curriculum includes courses in Simulation- mentation of new simulation-driv- with the necessary properties, one needs Our third laboratory is the Informa- driven (digital) Product Development, Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM), Advanced en design and manufacturing to understand the physics of the process of tion Technologies for Advanced Manu- Manufacturing Processes, Composite and Nanocomposite Materials, Additive and Thermal paradigms for the development of individual drops hitting the solid object. facturing lab. We study product lifecy- Spray Technologies, Industrial Robotics, Mechanics, Micromechanics, and Physics of advanced materials, structures, cle management (PLM). PLM involves Advanced Manufacturing, Numerical and Optimization Methods in Engineering and and engineering systems with the THE APPLIED ASPECTS virtually calculating the properties and Science, which provide an integrated scientific, technological and business perspectives enhanced lifecycle, mechanical OF MATERIALS SCIENCE predicting the behavior of a product of the high-tech sector. Throughout the program students also have a chance to conduct and physical characteristics de- Our center has three progressive labora- before it is released. For example, you under the guidance of professors. manded in high-tech industries. tories. The first is a Сomposite Materials can design an entire engine and test it

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Ildar Gabitov: // Biophotonics aims to study the building blocks of all living systems and extend human life//

Professor of the Master’s program bined courses on light-matter interac- the surface of optical elements signifi- at Skoltech Center for Photonics tion with those on the key properties of cantly affects their optical properties. and Quantum Materials Ildar quantum materials. This is seen, for example, in thin-film Gabitov tells us about targeted The basic knowledge delivered in antireflective lens coatings. Modern drug delivery, and the future of the Photonics and Quantum Materi- technologies have taken great strides Skoltech graduates. als course includes light-matter in- and make it possible to produce struc- teraction, and generating, detecting tured materials with unique optical ur center’s area of re- and controlling light. New materials properties. Elementary structures can search lies at the inter- are currently gaining particular im- be much smaller than the wavelength section of two key areas portance in the quest for solutions to of light. In many cases, these mate- of science and technolo- these problems. In classical optics, the rials’ properties are determined by gy – photonics and quan- main optical elements are lenses and quantum effects. tum materials. When we were putting mirrors made from materials with a Alongside basic research, our cen- together the MSc program, we com- high degree of uniformity. Modifying ter works with problems with practical

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application. These include compact nanoparticle is heated to a high tem- oretical foundations. These advance- compasses engineering but also fun- uate study, work in industry or go light modulators, flexible displays, perature using electromagnetic radia- ments are impossible without comput- damental knowledge in the fields of into business. Postgraduate study can flexible optoelectronic elements, and tion, thus exciting the electrons. Lo- er modeling. Together, these factors physics, chemistry, biophysics and be pursued both at Skoltech and oth- efficient light sources. We also plan to calized heating can be used to both create a considerable demand for beyond. Specialists should have a er educational institutions. Skoltech include courses that provide MSc stu- destroy tumor cells and effectively specialists working in this field. They strong grasp of all stages of the re- offers an industry-based summer in- dents with basic knowledge in the field view affected tissues using ultrasonic should deeply comprehend the phys- search process: the production tech- ternship designed to further students’ of biophotonics. diagnostics. Similar methods of plas- ics of the processes observed in the niques used to make research sub- skills and experience of working in PAVLOS LAGOUDAKIS mon resonance are used in high-sen- experiment and master mathematical jects, experimental analysis, and industry. What’s more, a program DIRECTOR OF THE HYBRID PHOTONICS LAB, SKOLTECH PROFESSSOR BIOPHOTONICS sitivity sensors that detect chemical modeling methods. theoretical models. is being developed that will see stu- Biophotonics is a rapidly developing and medical substances, and patho- What’s more, technological meth- dents being trained, gaining work ex- THE FUTURE OF SKOLTECH area of science that aims to study the genic agents. These are priority areas ods and techniques are also becoming perience at IPG Photonics, and under- The Advanced Photonics course will building blocks of living systems and within biophotonics research. increasingly complex. For example, GRADUATES taking practical work at RTI Systems. guide the students through a series prolong and improve the quality of hu- the subjects of modern research of- Our center at Skoltech boasts two first- We are looking to work with Russian of exercises that will demonstrate key man life. One of the key areas of study INNOVATIVE SPECIALISTS ten have complex structures and are class, well-equipped laboratories. Two Space Systems, state corporations, experimental techniques, and illustrate within biophotonics is targeted drug Highly-skilled specialists working in typically less than 100 nanometers in further laboratories will open in early and large- and medium-sized compa- basic principles of experimental laser sci- delivery. Most medicines affect the en- theory, computer modeling, experi- diameter. Creating these samples and 2018 after we move to the new campus. nies. Furthermore, the Skoltech ed- ence. The student will undertake a num- tire body. Targeted delivery methods mental research and technology are working with them requires specialists After graduating, Skoltech stu- ucational program will offer courses ber of experiments during the 12-week make it possible to ensure medication all needed to further the advance- with experience and skills in working dents have a wealth of choices, in- that prepare students to start their course working on each experiment for 3 is directed to the necessary organ and ment of photonics and quantum at the molecular and atomic level, and cluding: undertake further postgrad- own businesses. x 3 hour sessions in the lab, then ana- its therapeutic properties are activat- materials. the ability to construct objects from lyzing their results and making sense of the underlying physics. In parallel with ed as needed. The subjects of study, methodolo- nanoscale components. In turn, this these activities, each student will write Plasmon-enhanced therapy, which gies and the tools needed for experi- calls for the ability to work in con- The Photonics and Quantum Materials Master’s Program a short dissertation on one of a number is designed to diagnose and treat tu- mental research are becoming increas- trolled environments. This master’s program aims to provide fundamental knowledge and expe- of key topics in the field of laser physics. mors, is another promising area. With ingly complex driven by the need for Working with the latest, cut- rience with experimental research in the fields of modern electronics and This course will be of particular interest this approach, metallic nanoparticles modern highly efficient functional ting-edge experimental facilities, optoelectronics. The program is run jointly with the Moscow Institute of to those contemplating a career in the enclosed in a layer of surfactants are devices. The increasing complexity of which with each new generation Physics and Technology at the Institute of Spectroscopy of the Russian area of optoelectronics, photonics or delivered and selectively attached application-oriented problems pushes are increasingly complex, requires Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Institute of Solid State Physics RAS. quantum engineering. to the affected tissue. The metallic forward the development of new the- a knowledge base that not only en-

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“Over the past few years much of what Mikhail Gelfand: // High evolutionary biology is the science that attempts to explain how I’ve done is put out exactly things turned out like this// fires in science”

The Director of Skoltech’s Bio- sian universities where a master’s pro- world-class professors in several Rus- technology program talks about gram is practically made up of in-house sian universities, but if you look at the what’s in store at Skoltech for graduates. We recruit strong master’s concentration, I’d say that Skoltech is students entering molecular biol- students from other universities. We the strongest. ogy and genomics. don’t have any administrative restric- The third is the very high level of tions, so we can take on students who freedom in choosing what is now known he first significant difference have completed specialized or master’s as an educational trajectory. We have between our master’s de- degrees at other universities but also few compulsory courses and quite a lot gree program and those of want to enter our master’s program. of elective courses. You can take courses other Russian universities is As for our second feature, I’ll put in different Skoltech departments: if a that it’s a master’s without a modesty aside for a moment and say student is interested in bioinformatics, bachelor’s program. For that reason, we that it’s the level of academia. There they can take a course on data analysis don’t have the typical situation in Rus- are strong biological faculties with in the corresponding school.

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I’ll put modesty We have a compulsory summer in- MSc students the chance to take advan- these experimental courses taught school’s program. So, the bioinformat- ple still talk, and one of them, Sergey dustrial training program with biotech- tage of such opportunities, and at no jointly with HSE will attract groups of ics school’s initial intakes attracted Shmakov is about to get a PhD degree aside for a moment nological, pharmaceutical, agronomi- extra charge: everything is done with both biologists and mathematicians. people with mathematical and com- at Skoltech. and say that one cal and medicinal companies that are university funding. And when they begin to interact, it’s puter backgrounds, and biologists. At Skoltech, that kind of close coop- involved in molecular biology. Some of I lead two courses at Skoltech. The very interesting to watch. The joint However, the biologists weren’t look- eration between IT and biologists has of our features is the these internships are done abroad, for first is called “Introduction to Bioinfor- courses with HSE have an interesting ing to switch professions and become not yet been achieved, but I think that example, in Israel, at Israeli companies matics.” It’s compulsory for everyone background. For a while, the Yandex bioinformaticians; they wanted to it will gradually appear here as well. high level and Tel Aviv University, in industrial because it’s impossible to work with School of Data Analysis had a bioin- learn bioinformatics to improve their Skoltech has a strong IT department of academia divisions as well. This training program modern molecular biology and genom- formatics department, that I started. work in biology. They had the feeling and what’s more, they have previous is not a formality; students do indeed ics without using the methods of exper- Then Yandex decided that they didn’t it would come in handy. They orga- work experience with biologists, in- study to work in the industrial sector. imental data analisys. need it, and it turned into an indepen- nized seminars independently of the cluding joint scientific articles. Academic careers are structured like a My second course is “Comparative dent bioinformatics night school. It teachers, during which they explained There’s already a student in our pyramid: fewer and fewer people pass Genomics,” which is elective and cov- had no formal status, but we led stu- to one another what they didn’t un- program, Ekaterina Kondratyeva, onto each ascending level. And that’s ers more complex evolutionary topics. dents approximately at the level of the derstand: biologists told programmers whose scientific advisor is from the IT normal – not everyone dreams of an ac- From this year on, it will be a joint Skoltech master’s program. The data about biochemistry, and the program- Center: Professor Alexander Bernstein. ademic career. In this case, coherent in- course between Skoltech and the com- analysis field in biology and medi- mers told biologists about PYTHON It’s clear that these links will develop; dustrial training is very useful for those puter science faculty of the Higher cine at HSE still largely follows that and dynamic optimization. These peo- all the necessary components are there. who are eyeing careers in companies. School of Economics (HSE); students Second-year Skoltech MSc students from both universities can attend. We have the opportunity to do an intern- have two joint courses with HSE: for ship at an international university for the third term there’s Georgii Bazy- The Biotechnology Master’s Program This two-year educational course includes courses in molecular and cellular biology, as well as bioinformatics courses several months. kin’s course, “Evolutionary biology,” and courses on mathematical modeling in biology. Exploring classic and modern approaches, students conduct research If a student’s academic advisor has and for the fourth, my course, which in the fields of biomedicine and biotechnology using methods of bioinformatics and computer biology. The Biotechnol- scientific contacts abroad – and most of continues the topic. This is high evo- ogy Program invites not only applicants with bachelor’s degrees in biology and chemistry but also those with degrees us do – the student may very well work lutionary biology, the most interesting in physics, specialists in the field of IT and data analysis, and graduates from medical and agricultural universities. in a laboratory in the West. While this part of bioinformatics: it’s science that Biotech students collaborate with various relevant companies. Understanding how a biomedical business works helps sort of opportunity may be common- attempts to explain how exactly things students not only to choose a more successful career path, but also to become a more effective researcher. place for PhD students, Skoltech offers turned out like this. We expect that

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Konstantin Severinov // Biology needs sharp minds, computers and, after everything else, labs//

The Director of the Skoltech We offer everything in standard Rus- of whom are world famous. This en- Center for Data-Intensive Bio- sian postgraduate courses, including a ables our graduate students to go on medicine and Biotechnology philosophy exam. It’s not for me to say lengthy internships, from one to three talks about how to become if that’s good or bad. But, at the same years, in the best labs in the world at an advanced biologist without time, our program is taught in English universities in the United States, Eu- test tubes and Petri dishes. and we have quite a decent standard of rope and Japan. In some instances, material support for students – simply students do projects at Russian labo- he Skoltech PhD program in put, a stipend. ratories, as Russia also has very good the field of life sciences lasts There’s one factor that makes our laboratories. So, on the whole, this is a four years. It is certified and program exceptional: we have the only unique opportunity. accredited by all Russian state biotechnology program in the whole standards and is, essentially, a world without a laboratory. On the one ON INTERNATIONAL postgraduate program in the biological sci- hand, it’s not all that convenient, but INTEGRATION ences and their realization in molecular bi- on the other, there is a strong level of With this arrangement and proper ology, bioinformatics, and biotechnology. support and top-class professors, many guidance — many of our professors

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provide very competent guidance tional system precisely because many dent accompanies at least one of our PhD students and 15 professors. Nev- look. But you could just as easily ask a — students can quickly become im- of them spend substantial periods People who decide professor’s courses and assists them in ertheless, according to the Nature Pub- Catholic or Orthodox priest to describe portant integral parts of the global of time abroad. Our students write to enter our program lectures and seminars. lishing Group index, Skoltech occupies heaven for you. Given that no one’s scientific community. They have two their theses in English, and they de- We have fairly strict requirements the third place in Russia when it comes been there and no one’s come back, no scientific advisors: at Skoltech and at fend them in English as well. But we will be in no less of regarding whom we allow to go on to publications in life sciences journals. one knows what it’s like. We hope it’ll the laboratory where the joint project insist that in addition to the Skoltech a position than their to thesis defense. We devised these In this respect, we trail after such gi- be wonderful, and I’m prepared to be- is carried out. This approach makes it degree, the PhD, they also obtain the requirements ourselves, and they are ants as the Russian Academy of Scienc- lieve that, but I don’t have the imagina- possible for our graduates’ work to be- corresponding degree at Russian uni- peers at the best more serious than the requirements of es and Moscow State University, which tion to picture how exactly it will look. come a fundamental part of scientific versities, having written their thesis in universities in the a Russian postgraduate degree or re- have hundreds or even thousands of I’m hoping it will be stunning. cooperation between two groups or Russian. We don’t have an academic view board. In order to finish in four experts conducting research in this Our program is largely focused on even between two universities. That’s council, but we do have a committee United States and years and obtain a Skoltech PhD, stu- area. Our PhD students are co-authors bioinformatics research, and bioinfor- a really good thing. with at least two international special- Europe dents must have no less than two sci- of most of those articles. So, it seems to matics doesn’t really need laboratories; We have special funds that make it ists in the field of the thesis defense. entific articles in scientific journals and me that we are doing well. it needs computers and sharp minds. possible to send graduate students to This is the standard for all internation- feature as the first author of a mini- Due to infrastructure problems, Rus- scientific conferences. We make sure al defenses. mum of one article. ON THE NEW LABORATORY sian biologists are very strong in bio- that our people only go to the most We strive to attract and incorporate Our program is young and very We should get a biology lab in the near informatics. So here we tap into the recognized, major world conferences, everything that is rational in Western small, currently consisting of about 50 future. I’m often asked how it’s going to natural force of Russian science. and that they speak at them. This is scientific practice in preparing grad- extremely valuable experience. In uate students in biology, without for- short, people who decide to enter our getting Russian characteristics, such The Skoltech PhD program in Life Sciences program will be in no less of a position as the course in philosophy and thesis This program lasts four years. Students carry out research under the guidance of Skoltech professors from the Center than their peers at the best universi- defense in Russian. Also, our graduate for Systems Biology and Translational Medicine and can defend their theses in molecular biology, biotechnology and ties in the United States and Europe, students must work as teaching assis- bioinformatics. Students have the opportunity to attend the lectures of leading Skoltech professors, selecting courses in terms of both the learning environ- tants for professors: that’s how we’ve that are the most relevant to their scientific work. Apart from courses in the chosen specialization, there are also com- ment and the level of the scientific transformed the teaching practice re- pulsory courses in scientific history and methodology, entrepreneurship, and pedagogy. Each student studies following tasks they solve. quirements of the Russian Federal an individual plan that is worked out together with their scientific advisor and approved by an individual committee, Our graduate students are com- State Education Standard. This means, consisting of well-known scientists from Skoltech and other Russian and international universities. pletely integrated into the interna- in our case, that every graduate stu-

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Andriy Zhugaevich: // The global focus of materials science has shifted to the nano scale//

An associate professor at the stood on its own, independent of the global focus of materials science has Skoltech Center for Electrochemi- institute’s other programs. This year, shifted to the nano scale, and to rela- cal Energy Storage explains what we recruited around 20 students. The tively complex structural materials of exactly modern materials science program’s main distinction is its cut- all scales, from the atomic to the mac- is and talks about the program’s ting-edge status. As a field of study, roscopic. star-studded teaching staff. materials science is relatively wide- Skoltech’s Center for Design, Manu- spread in the former Soviet space, but facturing and Materials (CDMM) works e launched our ed- the form it’s taught in has long become with higher scales, while our program ucational program obsolete. Usually, if you ask the aver- focuses on the properties of materials in materials science age person what materials science is, at atomic scales. We study the mod- in 2014. Though it they’ll tell you that it’s science related ern materials that electronic devices was one of Skoltech’s to the sort of material tables, chairs, for energy conversion and storage are earliest programs, I would say that engineering structures or bridges are made of, which are evidently lacking this year, 2017, is the first time it has made of. But as a matter of fact, the in Russia due to technological limita- SKOLTECH 80 81 EXCELLENT EDUCATION DISCOURSE

We prepare our tions. We export raw materials and ship and practice. The laboratories have els, research of carbon nanotubes for The country is in great need of spe- these materials to Russia, but we would state-of-the-art equipment for mate- super compositors, the development cialists in materials science. That’s why graduates like to see them produced here. rials research, including equipment of cathodes for rechargeable batteries we naturally wanted our first graduates We work with lecturers from three that can be used to fully analyze and and predictions of small magnetic ma- to stay on at Skoltech. Most related to begin work CREIs: the Center for Electrochemical test rechargeable batteries and power terials. There are diverse topics, and studies all over the world are carried in research and Energy Storage (CEES), the Center sources, and produce laboratory proto- they are not merely abstract studies; out not by famous scientists, but by stu- for Photonics and Quantum Materials types of these devices. they’re linked to specific development dents, postgrads and postdocs. That’s KEITH STEVENSON development for DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR (CPQM) and the CDMM. Also, Profes- Our program provides students with projects carried out in our centers. Our the system we want to introduce in Rus- ELECTROCHEMICAL ENERGY STORAGE any company that sor Artem Oganov from the Interna- the fundamentals of materials science instruction involves both theory and sia. And we are extremely pleased that AND CENTER FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS. tional Union of Crystallography has and hands-on experience. Materials practice; it’s difficult to separate the when we asked our best students to stay ASSOCIATE PROVOST, develops materials a large individual group. We have 10– science is a very broad field of study, two in modern science. on at Skoltech, they agreed. DEAN OF RESEARCH 12 lecturers in total. Each lecturer ac- which is why the specifics depend on tively conducts work in fields related the course. Students can study materi- Our MSc and PhD Materials Science to materials science, and their activity als for energy conversion and storage, educational program is an interdisci- is confirmed by a high Hirsch index. materials for optoelectronics, materi- MSc and PhD Program in Materials Science plinary one that builds upon several Skoltech’s program in Materials Science provides knowledge and skills in core and elective courses taught by Each of our lecturer’s average h-index als for photonics or structural materi- the development of new materials and devices for various applications, faculty members of the CREIs in Elec- is around 30. I don’t think there are als (the CDMM deals more with this). with a focus on those that are in high societal demand, such as renew- trochemical Energy Storage, Photonics any other education programs in mate- We prepare our graduates to continue able energy, consumer electronics and healthcare. The program includes and Quantum Materials, and Design, rial science in the former Soviet Union their higher education at any global both core courses that teach the basics of the subject and advanced Manufacturing and Materials. In ad- taught by lecturers with such high fig- university in a course related to mate- courses taught by leading specialists in the field. The education is proj- dition to the specialized expertise, the ures in this respect. rials science, or begin work in research ect-based, starting from the very first course, giving practical knowledge program delivers a focused mix of both Our center’s electrochemical labo- and development for any company and allowing students to be engaged in state of the art research and de- experimental and computational mate- velopment during the entire period of study. Our students can find jobs ratories were launched at the end of that develops materials or materials rials science electives that are unique in research and development centers, innovation-intensive companies in 2016, so we have been able to recruit chemistry, including Mitsubishi, Sam- for universities in Russia and beyond. such sectors as electronics, energy, the chemical industry, the automo- a record number of students. We also sung, and more. Other elements of the program involve tive industry and other sectors that rely upon the development and use of have experimental laboratories and Projects carried out by students in industry immersion and the entrepre- advanced or complex materials. processing power; students can car- our program have included research neurship and innovation components. ry out experiments, combining theory of amorphous silicon-based solar pan-

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Anton Ivanov: // New commercial space programs are entering orbit//

The Acting Director of the Plus, at the beginning of the semester, [MOOCs] already exists on edX, Cour- Skoltech Space Center talks there’s an innovation workshop that ral- sera, and several other platforms. My about how the changing infor- lies everyone and points students in the students say: “Anton, of course we un- mation environment affects the direction they’re going to work towards derstand there is a system, but we can learning process. in the following months and years. still just look things up on Wikipedia.” Our main challenge is competing The Internet, the courses available, the really like the intensity of educa- with modern technology. Nowadays, huge amount of content – all of this is tion at Skoltech compared to stan- when students need to learn something, changing our lives. The lecture format dard European universities, where they just go on YouTube and watch also needs to change; at present, I go courses are usually spread out a video. We used to buy books, read out and talk for two hours, with min- in academic semesters. Intensive them, reflect about them… but now, if imal interactive learning. But holding coursework with substantial student I need to do something in Photoshop, I the attention of a modern lecture hall involvement makes it possible to focus find myself watching a video; it’s quick even for just 45 minutes is not that more on the material: you just have to and effective. In our field, an extensive easy. Our main goal is to adapt courses assign more tightly-packed material. series of Massive Open Online Courses to modern life and organize material in

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such a way that it takes new forms of homework, how to offer feedback to namely, for work with any other com- already had a display with glasses, and students an assignment to make a list information consumption into account. students, and so on. plex system. Of course, we’ll orient he showed us the flight of a satellite in of everything that’s wrong in Gravi- Skoltech can compare notes with Engineering is one of the most dif- them towards businesses in the space 3D. I was stunned. In the decade and a ty. Science fiction is useful even for École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lau- ficult fields of space science. Here, you industry and hope that there will be de- half or so that has passed, that technol- young scientists and entrepreneurs. sanne; they have professional develop- are not allowed any mistakes: after we mand, but I think the graduates of our ogy has gone mainstream. By the way, Today, the structure of the space in- ment courses for teachers. The struc- launch a satellite, fixing it isn’t an op- program would be useful in any field. many engineers from his lab work at dustry is rapidly changing, thanks ture of education will change soon; tion. Our approach is based on a de- There is a wonderful French word, Disney now. to the advances of SpaceX and Elon CLÉMENT FORTIN there will be no more large lectures. tailed elaboration of the project plan: polytechnique, polytechnic education, When my students start the course, Musk. New, commercial space pro- DEAN OF FACULTY, SKOLTECH SPACE CENTER Of course, basic material will stay the we take into account the fact that the which involves applying your skills in I give them a list of must-see movies: grams are entering orbit. Skoltech has same; Newton’s law still stands. But we development cycle of the product or different fields. Apollo 13, Contact, Interstellar, Grav- both the resources and the intellectu- need a new form of presentation. How project is complex, that there’s a test- From the standpoint of building ity — the last one is good, but there al possibilities to develop and launch We are at a turning point in higher educa- it is going to look? Will we have semi- ing cycle. We do our best to ensure that a scientific community, the world are so many mistakes! I even gave fantastic projects! tion; the future belongs to institutions that nars or interactive learning? These are students are aware of the complexity of could learn something from Russian will be able to blend well their learning the biggest questions for me as the new this process. When they say, “I’ll do it in universities. Let’s just say that we’ve modes. Skoltech is very well positioned for director of an education program. The a week,” we correct them and say that worked a lot with Bauman Moscow this as we have stood since the beginning main thing is, we do have the resources it won’t take a week, but two months, State Technical University. It has a Space and Engineering Systems Master’s Program This program combines study of the general principles of complex engineer- on the principles of CDIO (Conceive-De- to change that. minimum. Writing a code does take a youth space center with an amazing ing system construction with participation in satellite, drone and robotic velop-Implement-Operate), a worldwide Given that MOOCs are in high de- week, but developing it, connecting it atmosphere: students are excited to systems-building projects. The main principles of education consist of a initiative co-founded by our first president, mand, it would be a good idea to de- to other systems, developing interfac- come after school to work on projects project-oriented approach and focus on interdisciplinary research at the Edward Crawley. velop a number of similar Russian-lan- es, writing documentation, correcting or just drink tea, go on field trips, set nexus of engineering disciplines, including mechanics, electronics, math- In the Space CREI, we are looking at devel- guage courses to reach out to Russian errors – these things take time. up a summer school. We are also go- ematical modeling, and information technologies. Students in the program oping complex systems in the most efficient way. And of course, the desire for close speakers. If people want to master cer- We want students to leave Skoltech ing to work on creating a nice, warm are actively involved in the creation of small satellites, from mission devel- and deep space exploration will continue. tain subjects in Russian, they should with an understanding of their abil- atmosphere here, where students can opment to flight tests using CubeSat technology. Program graduates will These are phenomenal accomplishments have the opportunity to do so. At ities, with an understanding of how feel at home. possess fundamental knowledge in the field of system design and practical skills in the creation of complex systems. Upon graduation from Skoltech, for mankind, but we must never forget the moment, we have 653 students, much time the development of a com- Back in 2000, when I began work- that complex systems can also be used to but that number could reach 60,000 plex engineering system takes. So that ing at the NASA Jet Propulsion Labo- they will be in great demand at the leading Russian and international industrial companies in the field of space technologies. improve the lives of the men, women and through online learning. The technol- they use this systematic approach to ratory, I had a colleague. At the time, children of the 21st century. ogy is already there: how to assign build airplanes, helicopters and ships, no one knew anything about 3D and he

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Igor Krichever: // Mathematical physics classes demand twice the knowledge//

The director of the Skoltech MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS only “employed” the latest mathemat- Center for Advanced Studies and AS A FIELD OF SCIENCE ical theories – it introduced “physical Head of the Mathematical and It is difficult to offer a brief and com- intuition” and methods used in theo- Theoretical Physics Master’s prehensive definition of mathematical retical physics into many areas of pure program, tells us how to master physics research. In fact, the propen- mathematics. both the language of physics and sity of the field to rapidly change and This mutually beneficial cooper- the language of mathematics. evolve makes it entirely impossible. ation led to rapid progress both in Advancements in physics – particular- physics itself and in pure mathemat- athematical physics lies ly theoretical physics towards the end ics. Therefore, with some reservations, at the core of the MSc proof the 20th century – required the use we can say that modern mathematical gram run by the Skoltech of unconventional areas of mathemat- physics is a science that has emerged Center for Advanced ics such as algebraic geometry, sym- where physics and mathematics meet. Studies. The modern un- plectic geometry, topology, and even This is where an interpenetrating and derstanding of what this term encom- category theory (one of possibly the mutually fruitful synthesis of ideas passes is very different from the original most abstract branches of mathemat- occurs and new research methods of concept of mathematical physics. ics). Moreover, theoretical physics not both physical and purely mathemati-

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Bilingual people at Princeton led an attempt to “teach PROSPECTS edge of mathematical physics. It also a number of leading foreign scien- mathematicians physics”: they gath- A two-year master’s program is too offers students the chance to pursue tists to fully participate in the edu- are usually raised ered a number of distinguished math- short to fully master the breadth in-depth study of the fundamental cational process by supervising our in families where ematicians who then attended lectures of knowledge necessary to pursue models of modern theoretical phys- students as well as holding series of held by eminent physicists. They were mathematical physics and conduct ics. Students are expected to take lectures. The crux of our students’ parents speak more then asked to solve problems. In my comprehensive research. Therefore, part in research projects alongside scientific career involves compulso- opinion, the greatest beneficiaries of our master’s program forms the first eminent specialists, teachers, and ry scientific seminars and mandato- MIKHAIL SKVORTSOV than one language this experiment were the graduate stage of what would be understood as foreign colleagues specially invited ry attendance at summer and winter ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR PHOTONICS AND students and fresh new post-docs that a PhD program in western universi- to participate. We are planning for scientific schools. QUANTUM MATERIALS also took part. ties, where the second stage involves Our Mathematical Physics mas- postgraduate study. Not all students ter’s program is an attempt to cre- will want and manage to see the Our consolidated Mathematical and ate an environment where students course through to the end. Therefore, The Mathematical and Theoretical Physics Master’s Program Theoretical Physics educational program The key tenets of our Mathematical and Theoretical Physics educational cal theories are developed. Mathemat- simultaneously learn two languag- Skoltech, with its multidisciplinary offers students the chance to solely study program are compulsory scientific seminars (including student seminars) ical physics classes demand twice the es from the very outset. As far as I approach, is the ideal choice: offer- theoretical physics. Closely connected to and a strong scientific community. Students study tailored, individual knowledge and, what is perhaps even know, this type of program isn’t ing graduates knowledge with clear, experiments, theoretical physics involves courses approved by their supervisors, who determine the range of se- identifying and employing mathematical more difficult, fluency in two very dif- available abroad. In Russia, this type real application. Successful graduates lected courses depending on the specific area of the student’s scientific models to explain the laws of observed ferent languages: those of mathemat- of program is offered by the Faculty of our master’s program can be confi- study. We put emphasis on students’ independent scientific study that physical phenomena. The aim behind the ics and physics. of Mathematics of the Higher School dent that they will obtain spots at our encourages their rapid fundamental scientific (and thus career) growth. research undertaken by theoretical phys- of Economics (HSE). That said, the postgraduate school, but we also hope This has been proven by the extensive experience of our colleagues from icists is to reveal fundamental physical OUR EDUCATIONAL programs at Skoltech and HSE do they will be sought after candidates at the Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, the Landau Insti- laws. When teaching theoretical physics, tute for Theoretical Physics, the Independent University of Moscow, and PROGRAM not compete with each other. In leading scientific centers abroad. we aim to pursue in-depth studies of the the program’s main partner — the Faculty of Mathematics at the Higher It is well known that it is easier for fact, they complement each other. fundamental properties of the condensed School of Economics. Our program produces students and graduate stu- children to pick up new languages An agreement signed by Skoltech THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES phase. This part of the program is run in dents with internationally recognized, top-level qualifications. The scien- and, most commonly, bilingual people and the Higher School of Economics OF OUR PROGRAM conjunction with the Moscow Institute of tific world is their oyster: the doors of the world’s leading mathematical are raised in families where parents combines the programs and they are Our program is aimed first and fore- Physics and Technology and the Landau physics centers are open to them. speak different languages. Ten years organized and run as a consolidated most at giving researchers a ground- Institute for Theoretical Physics. ago, the Institute for Advanced Study educational program. ing in mathematics and deep knowl-

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Maxim Fedorov: // Fundamental research in machine learning has set its sights on a new goal: multitasking//

The Head of the Computational Systems in Science and Technol- Data Science Master’s program entific careers in machine learning ogy and Data Sciences Master’s Our Data Science master’s program and data analysis, start their own programs, and Director of the is a two-year course combining both startup, or go on to be highly sought Skoltech Center for Computation- the study of the basic mathematical after as top specialists in leading IT, financial and telecommunications al and Data-Intensive Science and foundations of data analysis with new disciplines such as deep learn- companies Engineering Maxim Fedorov tells ing. The program’s graduates will be Since new digital and data analysis us about the current data science able to develop automated methods technologies can now be found in problems and next-generation for analyzing large data sets and almost all industries, Skoltech grad- universities. apply them to find solutions to real uates are now finding themselves in practical problems. Our graduates high demand outside the conven- koltech is a next-genera- will acquire knowledge of the basics tional IT sphere in a wide range of tion university. It is a new and skills necessary in the applica- sectors: Russian companies working higher education model tion-oriented field, which will open in natural resource extraction and that combines innovation, up unique opportunities for them production actively seek out our Data science and education. It to use this knowledge to build sci- Science graduates, for example. was originally founded as an innova-

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tive university. Therefore, our center cal and data processing methods and is no universal program that can solve The same changes are taking place tigue, stress and other human factors By now, computer – a center of science, education and technologies. Key successes in this are multiple, fundamentally different tasks in terms of applications in business. – and raising patients’ quality of life. innovation – is also a new model. It is linked to new machine learning tech- like a human can. After all, humans play There are a lot of useful tools that use Continuing on the biomedical theme, programs have an attempt to face the challenges of the nologies such as deep learning, a.k.a. games, recognize faces, talk, etc. What’s the latest advancements in data sci- there is another promising area of applica- 21st century: the colossal stream of in- deep structured learning or hierarchi- more, people can learn to solve new ence, which can be tailored to suit a tion of note: using machine learning and begun to recognize formation that grows exponentially year cal learning. We already have a fairly problems independently. This is one of highly-specific task and can solve par- supercomputer technologies to develop faces even better upon year, the huge quantity of discov- wide range of tools that are success- the main challenges the science of arti- ticular problems just as well as a per- new medications. Various estimates sug- eries made at the intersection of various fully tailored to a number of specific ficial intelligence is currently tackling: son could – maybe even better. These gest the number of different molecules than humans – sciences, the rapid development of new tasks. For example: facial recognition creating programs that can multitask. applications are particularly effective at that can be drug-like molecules may ex- especially in cases digital technologies, etc. Our Centre is technology. The issue of facial recog- The search for new areas of applica- dealing with very large data sets that a tend to an order of magnitude of 1023 not a ‘standard’ applied mathematics or nition, which until recently was con- tion of the already available machine person simply couldn’t physically pro- to 1060, ten orders of magnitude great- involving large computer science department, but an sidered difficult, has practically been learning and data analysis technolo- cess. Methods facilitating the analysis er than the number of currently known samples. What’s interdisciplinary center of science, edu- solved. Now, computer programs have gies is another area gaining relevance. of large and super-large data sets that molecules (108). Obviously, synthesizing cation and innovation. It is difficult for even begun to recognize faces better The analogy with electricity is a strik- quickly offer solutions in critical situa- all possible compounds and testing their more, they do not me to find its direct equivalents in other than humans especially in cases with ing one. When it emerged and became tions are a singular priority. For exam- properties is impossible even if we had experience fatigue academic and research organisations. large samples. What’s more, they do accessible to the masses (i.e. a com- ple, there have recently been very in- billions of years to make it happen. This In some respects, it is an amalgam of not experience fatigue. prehensive infrastructure was created teresting developments in the real-time is where technologies at the intersection the best we have gained from the clas- However, in general, they are pro- transmitting electricity far and wide), rapid analysis of large arrays of meteo- of supercomputer modeling and machine sic Russian fundamental approach to grams that solve one task, albeit a very numerous inventions came about sim- rological data with the aim of predict- learning come to the rescue. natural sciences education and global complex one. The same can be said ply from the fact that any already-ex- ing hazardous meteorological phenom- The idea is that huge numbers experience in establishing innovative about machines recently beating peo- isting appliance could be made elec- ena (hurricanes, typhoons, floods, etc.) of previously unknown compounds educational centers. ple at complex games such as Go and tric: mechanical meat grinders became at a very early stage. are modeled on a supercomputer us- poker. It’s important to understand that electric, hand drills could be electric Machine learning applications in ing programs that were previously CURRENT DATA SCIENCE in each case the programs involved can drills and so on. In some cases, there medicine for the early diagnosis of a instructed to find suitable candidates PROBLEMS only solve one task – winning a partic- were peculiar failures due to techno- range of fatal diseases are also under- based on existing compounds. The vir- There are several principal areas with- ular game. Fundamental research in logical shortcomings, but overall, elec- going rapid development. This is re- tual screening process identifies mole- in data science. One of them involves machine learning has set its sights on trification led to the creation of more ducing the number of medical errors cules likely to exhibit medicinal prop- the ongoing search for new analyti- a new goal: multitasking. So far, there effective tools. – as computers do not succumb to fa- erties. This way, the effort required to

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discover new medications can be great- role worldwide. However, organiza- We educate ly reduced. It will even be possible to tions dedicated exclusively to research visionaries – those find new medications with improved lack a strong educational component. properties: minimal side effects, exten- For example, the Max Planck Society able to predict the sive therapeutic properties, etc. in Germany is one of the world’s best course science and scientific organizations, with approx- DATA ANALYSIS CENTERS imately 70 institutes. Some of them, industry will take WORLDWIDE such as the Institute of Informatics, in the next 10-20- Supercomputing and data science are are similar to our center in terms of extremely popular: there are numer- structure and aims but they don’t of- 50 years and make ous groups engaged in their study fer an educational track (you can’t for- justified decisions worldwide. Institutions similar to ours mally earn a PhD there for example). include the Data Science Institute at We have achieved a blend of educa- Imperial College London, and the Edin- tional and scientific components plus burgh Parallel Computing Center. They innovation. Similar approaches are both run very intensive educational currently being pursued in Singapore, programs in various areas, and master’s South Korea and other countries. and postgraduate programs that cover Skoltech’s model is also attractive in data analysis and supercomputing. The that it attempts to create leaders for the Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Ger- innovative technological sector who com- many combines supercomputing, Big prehend both the scientific and technical Data, and data science. Postgraduate aspects, as well as being innovators with students from nearby universities are excellent leadership skills. The immense able to attend programs in these areas. technological and cultural cornerstone It goes without saying that MIT, that is Russian science is an undisputa- Stanford, the University of California, ble advantage. We divide who we are Berkeley, and the research facilities at standing alongside into two categories. Google and Facebook play a crucial On the one hand, we have long-standing

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Machine learning establishments such as MIT, Stanford, and innovative skills. We educate vi- Computational Systems UC Berkeley, Moscow State University, sionaries — those able to predict the in Science and Technology tion, especially when applied applications and the Moscow Institute of Physics and course science and industry will take in to the development of new master’s program Technology, i.e. universities with a long the next 10 to 20 to 50 years and make in medicine for the Our Computational Systems practical Deep Neural Networks and glorious history and established tra- justified decisions on that basis, such (DNN). This may lead to the in Science and Technology mas- early diagnosis ter’s program is a two-year course ditions. In terms of publications, funda- as those related to which technologies development of new machines of a range of fatal aimed at furthering students’ mental developments, etc. we are their should be invested in, which specialists that will outperform humans knowledge and skills in devel- equals. On the other hand, we also com- are needed to find solutions to future in some difficult but still rather diseases are also oping and employing scientific pare ourselves to new establishments – technological problems, how to bring narrowly defined challenges, computing algorithms for high- new universities in Europe such as Jacobs about a technological revamp in a cer- such as recognizing human undergoing rapid tech industrial applications. The University in Bremen, new universities in tain field, etc. faces and the early diagnosis curriculum includes the study of Southeast Asia, China, Singapore and the By any standards we are a small uni- of certain illnesses, like skin development. One cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. high-level engineering (high-per- Arabian Peninsula such as the King Ab- versity. Skoltech has no plans to become ANDRZEJ CICHOCKI ML has dramatically improved of the applications is formance computing, cutting-edge dullah University of Science & Technol- a largescale institute. It is our aim to SKOLTECH in the past several years, but we modeling software, etc.) with in- ogy in Saudi Arabia. However, I’d like to train a select group of highly qualified PROFESSOR reducing the number depth teaching of the fundamen- are still quite far from reaching reiterate that Skoltech’s uniqueness lies specialists with a wide range of different tals of computational science. The the level of human performance of medical errors in the fact that we are not going it alone: skills. Basically, we educate department program’s alumni enjoy a wide for broadly defined tasks. Often, range of possibilities: participating we are establishing a new university on heads who may go on to become advisors machines still require the as- in research projects, launching a solid scientific foundation laid by our to scientific and technological company CDISE’s educational program strong- sistance of humans to complete startups, or becoming sought-af- colleagues and ancestors. heads. This is our main contingent and ly correlates with our cutting-edge specific tasks. We hope that ter specialists in the field of en- educational goal. We aim to educate fu- research in the areas of artificial after extensive coursework in gineering design and modeling in SKOLTECH STUDENTS ture technological leaders for the leading intelligence, machine learning (ML), ML and DL, our students will aircraft construction, the oil and We educate champions. Skoltech’s aim economic sectors. It goes without saying and – especially, deep learning (DL). be equipped to develop a new gas industry, telecommunications is to educate the scientific and innova- that science is a top priority. The major- New techniques in the fields of AI generation of smart machines and ML have enabled extraordinary that will be useful for humanity, companies, and science-driven tive elite. A successful Skoltech grad- ity of our graduates stay on in science. progress in the application of tensor especially for a wide spectrum pharmacological or biotechnolog- uate possesses scientific and techno- Those who have already launched their decomposition for dimensional reduc- of biomedical applications. ical companies. logical qualifications but has also been scientific careers with us have already endowed with leadership, managerial demonstrated excellent results.

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Alexey Cheremisin: // It’s normal for companies to select the best people and train them virtually from grade school//

The Associate Director for Exper- conventional hydrocarbon reserves, in- methods of enhanced oil recovery, imental Research at the Skoltech cluding new methods of oil recovery, developed block courses on modern Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery heavy oil recovery, shale oil and arctic methods in this field. Heriot-Watt talks about the Petroleum Engi- shelf hydrocarbons. University in Edinburgh created block neering program. The Skoltech MSc program in pe- courses on gas hydrates, methods of troleum engineering was developed developing gas hydrate sediments e created the Skoltech by the leading Russian and interna- and methods of combatting hydrate Center for Hydro- tional universities – global leaders in formation during hydrocarbon recov- carbon Recovery in their research and academic fields. ery and transportation. The leading 2014. Our center’s For example, a University of Calgary Russian universities and scientific mission is to train team under the direction of Profes- institutions were also involved: Bash- specialists and create world-class tech- sor Gordon Moore, who is the best in kir State University, the Schmidt In- nology in the recovery of tight and un- the world when it comes to thermal stitute of Physics of the Earth of the

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Russian Academy of Sciences and the ing innovative technologies in the the French Institute of Petroleum]. companies in Russia do this, but not program is for students to complete a Trofimuk Institute of Petroleum Ge- development of tight and unconven- English is the medium of instruction systematically. real-life project and defend the results ology and Geophysics of the Siberian tional reserves. The second line of at Skoltech, and students are con- Our students have a practical in- before specialists and the industrial Branch of the Russian Academy of study is modeling and data analysis stantly immersed in an internation- dustrial training program, which in- partner’s executives. Sciences, among others. Our center’s in the oil and gas industry. This is a al environment. Our center’s unique volves work on a real-life project In Russia in general, and in the oil educational program absorbed the new field in the oil and gas indus- laboratory makes it possible for stu- during summer break. Company spe- and gas sector in particular, there are unparalleled experience of the lead- try, which is undergoing rapid de- dents to carry out research using the cialists work alongside Skoltech pro- not enough small- and medium-sized R. G. MOORE ing groups and professors and insti- velopment internationally. Specialist most cutting-edge equipment. fessors to develop individual or group businesses. One of Skoltech’s tasks is to PROFESSOR AT SKOLTECH AND UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY tutes from Canada, the United King- training is held jointly at the Skoltech Most of our students’ projects are car- projects that students can complete in foster innovators capable of launching dom, the United States, continental Center for Computational and Da- ried out in cooperation with Russian oil two months’ time. Among the main re- their own businesses or developing new Europe and Russia. ta-Intensive Science and Engineer- and gas companies and service compa- quirements of our industrial training areas in companies’ R&D strategies. Skoltech has assembled world-class EOR Our program also features the in- ing. Another feature of our program nies, as well as startups, Skolkovo Foun- laboratory facilities which provide gradu- tegration of scientific advances in is that we don’t have full-time profes- dation residents, and other innovative ate students with opportunities to perform various fields of knowledge. In fact, sors. Professors come from all over centers in Russia. experiments on leading-edge equipment and every student’s course curriculum is the world to carry out research and In order to develop the program, Master of Science Program in Petroleum Engineering to use this data as input to numerical simu- The Skoltech master’s degree program in the field of oil production is formed individually, and they have are leaders in their fields. They teach we want to work with industry and lation studies on a wide variety of recovery unique in that it prepares students using the latest research and tech- the opportunity to obtain a vital set courses and lead student research attract leading specialists to lecture. techniques. The Skoltech MSc program nology, and their practical application in the oil and gas industry. The in Petroleum Engineering is unique in that it of skills, combining courses from our projects. Students have the oppor- This is imperative as students need program also provides opportunities to develop vital skills in the fields of provides opportunities for the development center and other Skoltech Centers for tunity to carry out part of their re- to be ready to solve pressing indus- innovation, entrepreneurship, communication, and management. Stu- of much-needed skills in innovation, entre- Research, Education and Innovation search in the world’s most advanced try problems. We are also engaged in dents are given the opportunity to do internships in leading Russian oil preneurship, communication, and leader- (CREIs). laboratories under the academic active dialogue with Russian and in- and gas companies and at international universities. The program was ship. It is complemented with an internship We divided the program into two mobility program. We are actively ternational companies about so-called developed in close cooperation with Russian oil and gas companies, opportunity to gain work experience with Skoltech employees, and leading universities in Russia, continental lines of study. One covers the ex- developing a student exchange pro- advanced training, when companies an oil and gas company. The program is Europe, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to train ploration and development of tight gram and double degree programs start preparing specialists several designed and delivered in direct collabora- graduates prepared for modern industry challenges. Students have the and unconventional hydrocarbon re- with international universities. For years in advance. Abroad, it’s nor- tion with the Russian oil and gas industry opportunity to carry out research in a world-class research laboratory serves. Today, we need new special- example, in 2016 we signed a stu- mal for companies to select the best as well as leading universities from Russia, using state-of-the-art equipment. ists who are capable of conducting dent exchange agreement with IFP people and train them in advance, Europe, the USA, Canada and the UK. multidisciplinary studies and creat- Énergies Nouvelles [IFPEN, formerly virtually from grade school. Several

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Michael Chertkov: // I like our students. They’re well rounded, highly educated and motivated to learn more//

The professor at Skoltech Center to electricity; we also deal with heating, instance – prices and weather, interact for Energy Systems tells how his gas and energy networks as a whole. with one another. In this context, ex- students are planning the energy Networks are a lot more than a pectations of uninterrupted manage- networks of the future. particular facility or consumer. Draw ment will only rise. all the power lines, gas and heating The aim of the Skoltech energy pro- ou’d think Russia would networks on a map of Russia and ask gram is to foster a new generation of have plenty of energy insti- yourself, how to properly – that is, re- researchers who are prepared to re- tutes that provide special- liably and without interruption – man- spond to this complex challenge. Our ists for the energy indus- age these interdependent systems. Not students can generally be broken down try. So, the question arises: only do these systems contain a million into three categories based on their why does Skoltech need this program? details; they are also subject to exter- background. There are energy majors When we deal with energy at Skoltech, nal influences and internal ambiguities. who come from the Moscow Power we’re uniquely focused on research used And with the introduction of new en- Engineering Institute, Bauman Mos- in modern information technology. ergy sources, storehouses and actively cow State Technical University, or the What’s more, we don’t limit ourselves engaged consumers, who react to – for Gubkin Russian State University of Oil

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and Gas, or who graduated from en- Network management, optimiza- gas and heating systems, which is go- ternational industrial partners. That’s other Russian and global universities. ergy faculties in Novosibirsk, Irkutsk tion, computer technologies, and ma- ing to be absolutely unique – this is just one example. Second, I like the multidisciplinary ap- and Saint Petersburg. Our typical en- chine learning combined with phys- not yet taught anywhere else in the On the whole, I like what’s going proach inherent to the Skoltech idea ergy students are qualified engineers ics know-how – how electricity runs world. on at Skoltech. First and foremost, I on the whole, and our Center for Ener- who, as yet, lack research know-how. through wires, and gas and heating All of our postgraduates take up like our students. They’re well round- gy Systems in particular. This has nev- The second category includes physics through pipes – all of these combined practical industrial training and often ed, highly educated, and motivated to er happened in Russia; narrow special- researchers who start out with a lack forms our unique specialization: smart continue research with our industrial learn. It’s exciting to be around them. izations have always dominated. And JANUSZ BIALEK of expertise in energy systems. They networks. Nowhere in Russia does any- partners in Novosibirsk, Moscow, St. I hope that in the next couple of years there aren’t all that many similar mod- SKOLTECH PROFESSOR, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER tend to come from the Moscow Insti- one teach this particular mix of sub- Petersburg and Irkutsk. My graduate our students will lead public and pri- els worldwide: you can count small FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS tute of Physics and Technology, Bau- jects. This is a new specialization, even student Vladimir Frolov is a good ex- vate, applied and theoretical projects, graduate schools focusing on the tran- man Moscow State Technical Univer- from a global perspective. The first ample. His project is on planning the along with teaching and carrying out sition from fundamental to applied sci- sity, Moscow and Novosibirsk State course that I developed for Skoltech, energy networks of the future about 20 research programs at Skoltech and at ence on one hand. Energy systems is an interdisciplin- Universities, and Saint Petersburg Introduction to Electrical Networks, is years in advance. This is complex op- ary field that combines knowledge Polytechnic University. Applied mathe- aimed at mathematicians and physi- timization, big computing, and smart of engineering (power, gas, heat/cool- maticians trained in modern computer cists. Subsequently, I prepared a course algorithms. Vladimir is a physicist by ing networks and devices, control), and computing technologies make up in stochastic modeling and computing training. He was accepted into the in- The Energy Systems Master’s Program mathematics (optimization, operation This two-year course aims to ensure students’ mastery of the disciplines our third category of students. that combines topics from statistics, stitute’s first cohort, and during his five research), economics and many other and skills necessary for research activity in the field of planning and Energy majors study programming, physics, computational science, and a years here, he has emerged as an inter- areas. Consequently, the Skoltech operational management of energy production, i.e. electrical, gas and educational program in energy systems modeling and optimization at a far mini course in graphic models. These national leader in this line of research. heating, transmission and distribution systems, as well as the application more profound level than they did as are both general courses; students He has published articles and continues draws from a number of disciplines to of this expertise to knowledge-intensive industrial projects. The main create a coherent program with two engineers. Physicists and applied math- from across Skoltech attend them, not to do so, and wrote a unique software concept of our program consists in combining modern theoretical and main flavors: one that is more mathematicians are taught engineering. As just energy majors. package. He is invited to prestigious, engineering disciplines, such as optimization, management, statistics, ematically oriented, and another that a result, all three types of students be- As director of the energy pro- specialized conferences. For instance, applied mathematics and physics, computational and information is more engineering oriented. We aim come well-rounded specialists, all the gram, I’m also in charge of planning at the end of August he presented technologies, machine learning and data processing, with the applications to educate well-rounded experts who while retaining their own styles. Our new courses. In particular, I prepare a specially selected paper at the IREP of modern energy. The program aims to prepare specialists who will be understand both engineering and more research professors also, incidentally, a postgraduate course dedicated 2017 Symposium in Porto. The paper scientific and technological leaders capable of developing and introducing formal mathematical aspects of design- come from different scientific back- to the modeling, management, and was very well received and prompted new methods and technologies of power systems of the future. ing and operating energy systems. grounds. For instance, I’m a physicist. planning of interdependent electrical, proposals for cooperation from our in-

SKOLTECH 106 107 EXCELLENT EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE

Dmitry Fedoryaka Why did I choose Skoltech? I really hope that the dream I’ve had since grade school will come First-year students share their impressions true here: I always wanted to study artificial intelligence – deep neural networks, in particular. I know that Skoltech offers special courses on neural networks: I really want to work with professors like Victor Lempitsky and Evgeny Burnaev. At the interview I was amazed that they Konstantin Chukreyev asked me straight up: Do you want to I want to go into science. Skoltech is study deep neural networks? I knew the right place to be: here, you under- then and there that I had to apply. stand that a scientific career is possible. The professors are really motiva- tional. Science is interesting! When you have the chance to do what you love – it’s awesome. I’m interested in bioinformatics, data analysis, and machine learning. I really hope that I’ll have my first successes in my two Anastasia Koloskova years here and can demonstrate my findings. Basically, I want to search I chose Skoltech’s data science MSc googled it and saw that the program for new algorithms, new methods and program on the advice of my supervi- offers great courses and the faculty is pursue data analysis in bioinformat- sor Maxim Panov and after hearing the excellent. So I decided to apply. My ics. This is all on-trend right now. feedback from current students. I then parents were supportive of my choice.

SKOLTECH 108 109 EXCELLENT EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF THE FUTURE СТРАТЕГИЯ

Alexandros Adamis Tinashe Prince Maviza Skoltech is a great institute far from Skoltech has actually set the bar for me, as the environ- the status quo. It combines science, at ment has influenced me to view the world from a unique the theoretical and experimental lev- angle, which is, translating our scientific research and els, with how ideas can be transformed knowledge to help humanity, and this for sure completely into products and fulfil people’s needs. resonates with my inner thoughts about the future. It’s a The students here are friendly with rare asset to be in an atmosphere with great minds that great senses of humor and challenging allows one to connect and network with people who have ideas. Both students and professors, the sole purpose of bringing change in our world. we are all part of this community, like a living organism trying to make it better and greater every day.

Artem Filatov Daria Shatko I decided to apply for the Master’s At first, I wanted to apply to the Higher School of Economics but based on a friend’s degree in data science at Skoltech recommendation, I took interest in Skoltech, googled it and changed my mind. First- because it has the best professors in ly, I liked that all classes are in English. Secondly, when looking through Skoltech’s the field. I really want to attend Ivan master’s programs, I realized that my interests are different from my graduate thesis Oseledets’ course in numerical linear – theory and equations. I’ve shifted from quantum mechanics towards materials: algebra and learn from Professor I’m particularly interested in this new area because of its far-reaching applications. Vladimir Spokoiny. Skoltech offers I find the applied approach very appealing: when you find something interesting, excellent opportunities to study sci- get it into an experiment, then into the engineering stage, it’s awesome! Photonics ence, and write articles. The biggest involves materials, complex theoretical topics, and has tons of prospects for new plus is you are given a ton of scien- projects. Skoltech’s master’s program is flexible enough to allow me to explore my tific freedom. potential in both fundamental science and the application-oriented sphere.

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The Masterskaya workshop at Skoltech began in 2013 as 15 square meters made available for students to hack electronics and develop simple prototypes. When I was placed in charge of it, in comparison to Skoltech’s other large research centers, it was barely even noticed. We worked hard to show our value to the Institute and received a steady increase of support from the President. Now we have grown into 700 square meters of advanced machines, and we serve all the Skoltech entrepreneur, student and professor prototyping activities. In the future we hope to grow into a full-fledged technology incubator, taking new ideas and developing them into products and companies.

BRENDAN SMITH HEAD OF THE SKOLTECH MASTERSKAYA A WORKSHOP

SKOLTECHModel Kit112 113 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ MASTERSKAYA

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Space Tomatoes The aim of my PhD project is to have a measurable impact on precision agriculture in Russia, particularly with respect to the development of a robust methodology for prediction dynamics of plant growth based on mathematical modeling and with the use of statistics. This topic is relevant in terms of fundamental research and possible commercial applications. More and more agriculture companies are seeking the latest technologies based on computational and data science in order to increase yields and improve the quality of products. Likewise, this research is important for the development and control of robust life support systems in space applications. The novelty of my work is that I will try to improve the accuracy and the time range of plant growth dynamic prediction in uncertain conditions, or when a small amount of data is available. I have conducted successful experiments related to the collection of huge amounts of data describing plant growth. My initial results were very promising. I’m currently planning my next generation of experiments. My PhD advisor is Skoltech Provost Rupert Gerzer.

DMITRY SHADRIN PHD FELLOW, SKOLTECH SPACE CENTER

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Dzmitry Tsetserukou: // A country with a low population density and a huge territory must be fully automated//

Professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou, number of human errors. Industry 4.0 mobile robots, and other elements. The Director of Skoltech’s Intelligent encompasses several subdivisions. The system must be fully autonomous. Space Robotics Laboratory, talks first is mobile robots. By the way, Amazon’s mobile robots about the projects students are For instance, did you know that the are not an automated system; they fulfill currently working on in his labo- number of robots at Amazon Robotics tasks by moving along routes assigned ratory and what it takes to be one [formerly Kiva Systems, producer of mo- in advance and navigating through of them. bile robots for order transportation at magnetic markers. Amazon warehouses] has increased by There is also an area related to digital hich areas of re- 50% since 2015, from 30 to 45 thousand factories. This area involves the automa- search in the field units? At the same time, warehouse option of the majority of business processes: of robotics do you eration efficiency has increased by 20%. robots in an automation system become consider the most Our laboratory works closely in this area more than merely machines that carry important today, and with the Skolkovo company RoboCV. out operations. They must learn by them- which of them are being developed at A number of graduate students are selves and adapt to situations in real time. Skoltech? currently working on the PickToGo sys- In the lab, we are pursuing a proj- The most important area in Robotics has tem for large warehouses. Their objective ect in this field – in mobile phone man- become business process automation is to automate a set of pallets with goods agement. It is being conducted under and the transition to so-called Industry in warehouses. It’s not a trivial task; it the Next Generation Grant Program 4.0. The aim of this area is to improve involves computer vision, manipulators for joint research projects between production efficiency and reduce the on mobile platforms, the development of Skoltech and MIT.

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These are two areas that I consider Among other things, the Skoltech they from and why did they choose and computer vision systems – we collab- to be in the most high-demand as ap- lab will work to create tactile interfac- Skoltech? orate with MIT. We’re planning to work plied sciences. es that help people immerse themselves There are students from India, Serbia, Iran, on stratosphere drones with DLR. That’s a Drones are also a very promising in virtual spaces. This will be useful, for Spain, and Costa Rica. They have very di- very exciting area. We also work with the field. As Russian agriculture develops, instance, in the medical sphere. Doc- verse origins. At present, the number of Japanese University of Electro-Communi- there should be a growing market for tors can carry out virtual rehearsal op- applications from international students cations on tactile interfaces. We collabo- them. The identification of plant growth erations, in which they will feel the re- is surpassing those of Russian students. rate with Japanese partners on medical indices, diseases, automated pesticide sistance of tissues, and the touch and At the moment, I’m planning to send two projects as well. I should also note that spraying – these tasks can be solved us- texture of the relevant objects. Tactile graduate students to the Massachusetts In- Skoltech robotics lectures are taught by ing unmanned aerial vehicles. Another interfaces are used for this purpose in stitute of Technology (MIT) for practical internationally renowned professors. Five potential use is the development of the virtual reality. training. Skoltech actually started working lectures of the Dynamic Management Arctic and automation of ship naviga- with MIT specifically in the field of scientif- Systems course are taught by Professor tion systems on the Northern Sea Route. Do startups born at Skoltech re- ic research, rather than just in education. Kamal Youcef-Toumi from MIT, who ceive some kind of support from the We are actively developing programs holds 30 patents and has written a book Is there interest in robots that interact Skolkovo Foundation? with the leading European universities: on creating direct-drive robots. Professor directly with humans? Any advances Certainly. In the field of robotics, we coop- this year we’re sending one of our PhD Hiroyuki Kojima, from the University of in that direction? erate mainly with two Skolkovo clusters: students to the German Aerospace Cen- Electro-Communications in Tokyo, trav- Two new areas that we will launch in the aerospace and IT. Startups that emerge at ter [DLR] near Munich. One of the best eled from Japan to lecture here. near future are the Collaborative Robot- Skolkovo receive, first and foremost, the robotics laboratories in the world is lo- ics Lab and the Virtual Reality Lab. In the foundation’s expert support. cated there. The international academic What professional goals do you per- collaborative field, we will have the best At the moment, two startups have mobility program for students is pro- sonally set for yourself? robots – Universal Robotics, KUKA, Fa- passed the preliminary stage of prepa- gressing well. I came to Russia with a dream: to cre- nuc – all high quality and state-of-the-art. ration and are applying for foundation ate a successful laboratory in Russia and The second laboratory – Virtual Real- resident status. It makes sense for our Which international universities does train students capable of developing this ity and Tactile Interfaces – will be some- startups to remain in the ecosystem. Skoltech collaborate with in the area area across the country, not just in Mos- Skoltech’s student robotics team reSET has won first place at the Russian stage what smaller but will feature all modern of robotics research projects? cow. A country with a low population of the Eurobot competition two years in a row, and has received excellent results haptic platforms and a high-precision Are there international students at For digital factories – creating new robots density but a huge territory must be ful- both years at the international finals in France motion capture system. your laboratory and, if so, where are and management systems for these robots, ly automated.

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Vladimir Spokoiny: // Entire areas of knowledge are starting to die out//

In 2017, the Higher School of Optimization and Stochastics. The Machine learning theory and artificial of Economics (HSE) and Skoltech aim of that program was to provide data intelligence are dynamic and rapidly launched a Statistical Learning science specialists with the opportunity developing areas of modern science. Theory MSc program designed to gain an in-depth education in math- Finance and bioinformatics may have to prepare students for scientif- ematical disciplines such as optimiza- once been leading fields, but now at- ic research at the intersection tion, statistics, and stochastic analysis. tention has broadly shifted to artificial of mathematics and computer This year, we launched a joint HSE and intelligence. It suddenly became clear science. The program’s academic Skoltech project based on the program that hundreds of thousands, perhaps supervisor, Skoltech professor developed at the HSE. Our main goal is even millions, of people are working Vladimir Spokoiny, told us more to offer students a full range of cours- in AI. However, they are focused on about this exciting new program. es that encompass modern statistical finding solutions to specific engineer- learning theory. Two years from now, ing problems. There are very few spe- ow did this program orig- we expect the course to bear its first cialists that understand the mathe- inate? fruit: top-level specialists in one of the matical essence of this area of science. Two years ago, we launched most sought-after areas of expertise. Statistical learning theory courses are a master’s program at the already on offer at various institutions HSE Faculty of Computer Why do you think this area is in such including Berkeley, Stanford, univer- Science called Mathematical Methods high demand? sities in Paris and Berlin, and other SKOLTECH 122 123 EXCELLENT EDUCATION INTERVIEW

scientific centers. On the back of this, If candidates don’t have a command there are completely practical ones. have partnerships with universities in The coming IN COOPERATION we decided to launch a similar proof basic conceptual thought, our pro- But theoretical courses are compul- Berlin, Paris and Grenoble, and intern- To date, Skoltech has implement- gram in Russia. We very much hope gram will not be suitable for them. sory. This includes modern statistics, ships are available at Cambridge, the technological ed MSc programs in network form that gifted students from various Rus- methods of computational linear alge- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, revolution is with the Moscow Institute of Phys- sian universities will show interest in How many courses does the program bra and optimization methods. Those Berkley and Stanford. We take all intern- ics and Technology, the Higher joining our ranks. have? are the fundamentals that every spe- ships very seriously, and we don’t send entirely based on School of Economics, the Kazan We put together a list of courses ac- cialist working with modern machine students if we find them ineffective. We Federal University, the Far Eastern What background and knowledge do cording to three gradations: compul- learning theory and artificial intelli- expect productive cooperation with lead- data science. In a Federal University and the Baltic students need to get accepted into sory, semi-compulsory, and optional gence needs to know. ing specialists in machine learning theo- Federal University. number of fields, The institute has also organized the program? courses, including those taught by Our concept holds that every stu- ry from around the world. A number of the computer has joint educational programs, where The selection process is tough. We guest lecturers. In total, the list has 28 dent must immediately or reasonably scientists have agreed in principle and students receive diplomas from recruit students with degrees from courses broken down into these three quickly find a personal supervisor who are prepared to come and teach special- proven to be more both institutions upon graduation, higher education institutions. For ex- categories. We require students to will guide them through the entire ized courses in our program. from Novosibirsk State University ample, the following programs are take a minimal number of courses, but master’s program. We draw up a list effective than the and St. Petersburg State University deemed a suitable background: those they can take as many courses as they of topics and proposals for students Which specific studies and research human brain. It’s of Aerospace Instrumentation. run by the HSE faculties of Comput- want. Instruction is structured in such where we talk about what each pro- are open to master’s students? In 2018, Skoltech plans to er Science or Mathematics, or by a way that we first allow students to fessor is working on and what will be There are lots of them. One of the very important that launch network-form MSc programs the Moscow Institute of Physics and attend one or two introductory cours- possible to join in on. Additionally, ones I’m working on at the moment humans don’t get with the Southern Federal Universi- Technology’s faculty of Control and es, which are quite immersive. Only we organize seminars on various sub- is clustering. Multidimensional data ty and Surgut State University. Applied Mathematics, or Lomonosov later does it get really hardcore. jects. At the moment, we have three clustering is a very interesting chal- lost in all this Moscow State University’s faculties seminars, including optimal transport lenge. Imagine that you have data of of Computational Mathematics and Is it all theory, or are there practical theory – the most mathematical one – any kind – medical records, videos, Cybernetics or Mechanics and Math- courses as well? or deep learning of neural networks, texts – anything. And they have to be ematics. We don’t require anything It’s clear that there must be theoret- which is the most practical one. The broken down into groups of homoge- super-specialized, but applicants must ical courses, but by no means should aim of these activities is to engage stu- neous objects called clusters. This task have a comprehensive grasp of calcu- all courses be theoretical. In that re- dents in active work. comes up in an enormous number of lus, linear algebra, functional analy- spect, we have a wide range. There Students have the opportunity to do applications. There are thousands of sis, probability theory, and statistics. are highly theoretical courses, and internships at Western universities. We algorithms, but so few theories that no

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one knows what a cluster is. Low-di- What are your views on the cross- immerse themselves in it. And then, if mensional data can be visualized and over of young people from science to you have the expertise, you can devel- Two in One broken down into clusters manual- business? op further as a specialist. Online educational programs ly. But it’s very difficult to propose a I assume this applies to a 1:5 ratio. In our program, we will plan and pro- provide students with the chance sound, stable method for true multi- If everything goes well, around 20% pose projects ourselves, and they must to use the resources of several dimensional data. That’s what we’re remain interested in science during be knowledge-intensive. The results of educational or research organisa- working on at the moment. A related the transition from a bachelor’s to the work should be published in scien- tions in the learning process, as well as to receive two diplomas subject is instruction in partially la- a master’s program, and the same tific journals. Our version of a master’s (Skoltech and a partner university) belled data. thing happens after a student ob- degree is a third to half of a dissertation. after completing their program. These are just a few mathematical tains his or her master’s degree. I’d Those who go on to further study will do problems, but there are also entirely say that we occupy the niche that so with substantial material at the cut- Students master one part of practical projects that we have run students who want to stay in science ting-edge of science. the educational program at and continue to run with different come to. A process of elimination Skoltech and another at a partner companies. takes place beforehand; we warn In terms of humanity at large, what’s institution. students straightaway that we focus the meaning of your work? The advantages of these With whom exactly? on training scientists. After that– We’re working in the very area where programs are: We recently did a traffic analysis we’ll see how it goes. humans are indispensable: in the area project for the Chinese telecommu- of understanding. Why this all works 1. The opportunity to use the nications company Huawei in order In your opinion, what are the key ap- and where to advance from here. We resources of several organisations. to optimize their telecommunica- ed in deep neural networks, cluster of applied mathematics. You have proaches to the organization of the don’t just instruct common users, we 2. A unified educational program. tion network architecture. We drew analysis and a number of other, sim- to be a specialist in statistics, in Skoltech master’s program? foster creators. I believe that mathe- 3. The opportunity to receive two up another project on resource ilar problems. But I can’t disclose probability theory, in optimization Skoltech is an innovative university maticians will be more and more in diplomas after completion of the distribution optimization. We had any details due to our confidentiali- theory, in computational methods that fosters students capable of mak- demand; they’ll always be in demand. program (in cases of enrolment projects with Sberbank, and now ty agreements. and linear algebra. All are essential ing technological breakthroughs. But Mathematicians build models, they at both Skoltech and a partner we’re talking to Sbertech and look- On the whole, I would say that in their entirety and, if specialists it is my opinion that a university is understand what, how and why new university). ing forward to working with them. most of the scientific challenges don’t have a certain body of knowl- not a design office. Students have ideas, methods and approaches hap- 4. A single dissertation. There are projects in Germany with that occur in the modern world edge, they’ll have a tough time only two to three years during their pen and are generated. Without that, Bosch and Opel. They’re interest- require competency in all fields from the outset. master’s programs to learn science, to progress is impossible.

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Anton Krotov: // Students from Vladivostok now have the chance to study bioinformatics, functional genomics, and genetic engineering//

A Skoltech MSc student finds versity (FEFU), I looked into Moscow ness-raising projects. For example, time not only to study bioinfor- State University, the Moscow Insti- a science festival timed to coincide matics and deepen the cooper- tute of Physics and Technology and with the Illuminator Award. Our fes- ation between Skoltech and the Skoltech. I studied chemistry, spe- tival brought together the best prac- Far Eastern Federal University, cializing in organic chemistry, and tices of Vladivostok’s pop-science but also to work with children at used to do laboratory research. After projects at the FEFU, where we stud- Sirius Educational Center and get a while, I wanted to turn my hand to ied and worked. We invited young, involved in preparations for the biology, but without getting involved inspirational speakers to attend. For re-opening of the renovated Poly- in wet and dirty work. I realized I example, an astronomer from the technic Museum. could try bioinformatics, i.e., working Sun Service Observatory spoke about with data obtained from numerous the latest discoveries in astronomy ell us about the universi- experiments. Skoltech seemed to be and astrophysics. The creators of the ty you studied at and how an incredibly attractive environment Science on the Road: Primorye Quest you got into Skoltech. where I could pursue side projects. In made a scaled-down version of their After graduating from the Vladivostok, my colleagues and I set project on our site based on the idea Far Eastern Federal Uni- up and ran educational and aware- of a scientific quest for parents and

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their children. Families could visit but then decided to try out some- er, the teaching staff lacks specialists lectures. For example, on why GMO Technology, the Tomsk Polytechnic Skoltech has a project at the Poly- our university as microbiologists, ar- thing more serious. We gave jewel- from a number of important indus- is not a scary prospect. University, and this year it embarked technic Museum run by a team of six chaeologists, and have a go at study- ry a try. Over the course of four les- tries. Skoltech and FEFU’s partner- on a joint program with the Higher students. We write pop science texts ing ethnography and the botany of sons of about one and a half hours ship means that students from Vladi- What do you think the joint FEFU and School of Economics. I think this list for the Polytechnic Museum and the region all in one place: an excel- each, 12 children created the mate- vostok now have the chance to study Skoltech projects offer students? of universities will continue to grow serve as scientific advisers to the Life lent example of what is now called rial and made earrings and badges subjects their school doesn’t offer: The two universities together offer because Skoltech wants to work with section of an upcoming Polytech ex- citizen science. from it. What’s more, each child did bioinformatics, functional genomics, students a greater wealth of oppor- young, talented scientists. position, which is currently still un- everything themselves. It was gen- and genetic engineering. They can tunities than they could separate- der reconstruction. The section will You worked at the Sirius Educational uine edutainment: we taught them also take courses that cover tech- ly. What’s more, students have the Tell us about your scientific supervisor. explain what a cell is, what types Center. Tell us about it. in-depth microbiology lessons and nological entrepreneurship, for ex- chance to step outside their comfort Professor Pervouchine is an out- of cells there are, how they differ, In my opinion, Sirius is the best ed- instructed them on how to work ample. FEFU students often pursue zones; if you only study at one univer- standing bioinformatics specialist. and how evolution occurs. We also ucational center for children. It has with real microbiological boxes. A degrees linked with marine biology; sity, don’t establish contact with the In addition to Skoltech, he also has advise the museum staff when they a great infrastructure, both in terms lot of the children had never stud- in Moscow, this is a far rarer choice. educational scientific environment, professorships at the Higher School think up some kind of crazy idea for of technical set-up and the staff, and ied microbiology before at all – some Therefore, they can choose where don’t go to conferences or take part of Economics and Moscow State Uni- an exhibit – a three-meter DNA or Sirius has a huge number of partner of them had a figure skating back- they want to defend their disserta- in internships, etc., your horizons are versity, has worked at the Center for protein molecule, for example. We programs. Its projects are developed ground, others – hockey. We intend tion and diploma theses: in Vlad- limited. The chance to attend cours- Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, listen to their creative ideas and try by excellent teachers from all over to continue this project at Skoltech: ivostok or at Skoltech. In April, we es at another university, study with and collaborated with ENCODE (the to steer them towards a more scien- Russia, including Vladivostok. At we’ve built the studio, and now we’re announced a joint educational pro- great professors, gain experience, global genome decoding project). He tific approach. Sirius, Laura Elidedt Rodriguez (my organizing the staff. gram run by Skoltech and FEFU. We make friends and acquire contacts is studies noncoding DNA sequences: Mexican colleague from Skoltech) organized a series of lectures specifi- amazing. a hot-button issue. There have been What do you plan to do after you and I started working on a very in- Which joint FEFU and Skoltech proj- cally for this program in Vladivostok publications stating that 80% of them graduate? teresting biology project. We grew a ects have you taken part in? with the participation of my supervi- Do you think the program will be fur- are actually functionally important. I will probably teach or work on edu- material similar in texture to artifi- This year, Skoltech and FEFU sor Dmitri Pervouchine and Skoltech ther developed? However, recent publications refute cational projects such as career guid- cial leather from a bacterial culture launched a joint biotechnology MSc Professor Mikhail Gelfand. They not Absolutely. Skoltech is really keen this fact. This is a very interesting and ance. I want to create a program that that can be used to make all kinds of program. FEFU has a very impres- only held serious scientific seminars to forge partnerships with leading hotly-discussed topic. gives children the chance to try some- household items – we made a lamp- sive resource base, excellent labora- attended by many young scientists universities. It already has joint pro- thing out with their own hands in or- shade. It’s totally crazy! At first we tories, and outstanding biomedicine and researchers from FEFU and oth- grams with Moscow State University, You work with the Polytechnic Muse- der to help them go on to decide what just played around with the children and natural science schools. Howev- er institutions but also gave popular the Moscow Institute of Physics and um, don’t you? they are interested in.

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SKOLTECH TEAM CONDUCTS CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH

Research takes INSkoltech ANTARCTICA students not only to top universities and laboratories, but also to the edge of the world

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or nearly a decade, Professor Konstantin Severi- nov, Director of the Skoltech Center for Data-In- tensive Biomedicine and Biotechnology, has deployed researchers to the Southernmost reaches of the globe to collect snow. Each year like clockwork, a carefully packaged shipment of melted, concentrated snow slowly makes its way from the al- thousands of years. When the iceberg breaks down from abaster shores of Antarctica to the concrete jungle of Moscow. the continent and goes to South America or Africa it may And with each new shipment of samples, Severinov’s bring with it as fellow travelers the whole bunch of mi- team gains a deeper understanding of the microbes that crobes which may be very, very old.” populate Antarctica and the lessons they carry for the rest So even if there are no snow-adapted microbial com- of the world. munities, Severinov’s findings in Antarctica could lead to What does Severinov’s team do each year in Antarctica? “It is both interesting and important to establish whether invaluable discoveries regarding the global spread of mi- “Before looking at human-induced contamination, it is im- there are specific snow communities of microbes that live in crobes and viruses and their changes over the years. portant to determine the background, that is, the natural Antarctica,” Severinov said during a recent interview. For a In addition to studying the continent’s microbial popu- level of microbial content and what characterizes the com- microbiologist, the discovery of microbial communities that lation, Severinov’s group works with the Russian Antarctic environment into which they were placed – that is, in an munities in the ice or the snow… where there has been no have evolved to withstand the harsh conditions of Antarctic Expedition [RAE or expedition]. Since 2012, the RAE, has environment that they aren’t native to,” said Viktor Fe- human influence yet,” Severinov said. winters could be the mother lode, carrying boundless poten- attracted international headlines for drilling through Ant- dorchuk, a geologist interning at Severinov’s center who He explained that to accomplish this, it is important to tial for developments in fields ranging from genomics and arctica’s frozen crust to reach Lake Vostok, a freshwater travelled to Antarctica in late 2016. examine geographically remote locations, and to review industrial biotechnology to gene editing. lake previously sealed off for millions of years. Professor Explaining that a portion of his research was devoted to the same points during different periods of time. “It could well be there are no particularly adapted snow Severinov’s team serves as part of the expedition’s bio- the monitoring of microorganisms that humans introduce, Once researchers collect snow samples from these lo- microbes, but rather microbes that get deposited on the monitoring group, assessing the anthropogenic impact on he noted that Antarctica is globally unparalleled in terms of cations, they ship their boons back to Russia via the RAE surface of snow from the air,” he added. “This is still inter- the continent’s fragile environment. offering an environment that has never been home to per- vessel to be analyzed. Once the samples arrive, a Mos- esting because then you can regard Antarctica as an enor- manent human populations or large communities of animals. cow-based team of researchers working under Severinov mous depository of microbes collected over hundreds of What does Antarctica have to offer that the researchers “There is practically no life in Antarctica,” Fedorchuk uses state-of-the-art methods to analyze the DNA within couldn’t find in another (more convenient) location? said. “As such, if something is introduced there, it is very the microbes found in the snow samples. “In many ways, Antarctica provides unique conditions for easy to register, even if we bring in these microorganisms In 2016, for instance, his team found considerable di- the investigation of the behavior of microorganisms in an in very small quantities.” versity between bacteria collected at four different sites

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in eastern Antarctica. Their analyses of these bacteria re- In Antarctica, snow only falls in vealed thousands of unique CRISPR spacers – elements of prokaryotic DNA that enable bacteria to fend off viruses. the winter time, and in summer None of these spacers matched those of similar bacteria time it’s mostly bright sky located in the northern hemisphere. This team included Skoltech students along with researchers from the Russian Academy of Science, Moscow State University, St. Peters- burg State University and St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University. Despite his team’s strong track record, Severinov decided to change course this year, noting the difficulty of circumnavigating Antarctica and re-visiting the same back in time by up to about 20 years while being in the spots time and time again. This inspired the professor same place.” to assign a novel means of sample collection to Skoltech Fedorchuk noted that the novelty of the technique intern Fedorchuk. came with a steep learning curve. “The most challenging “In Antarctica, snow only falls in the winter time, and part of the expedition probably was working on a job that in summer time – which is when people are there on ex- I had never done, in an environment in which I had never pedition – it’s mostly bright sky,” Severinov explained. “So been. And the main difficulty was that no one had done the snow that fell last year would then be covered by the [this type of work] before me. I needed to develop a robust snow that fell this year, and so on and so forth… So I told technique from scratch and make sure that I did not con- [Fedorchuk] to dig. He was digging holes – going down taminate samples such that only resident microbes were by some 2-3 meters with his shovel, and as he was doing present” the geologist said. He then added that he had to that, because he’s a geologist by training, he easily identi- tweak the process in progress. fied layers of snow and ice from different years, and then he was collecting samples from different layers, travelling What’s it like to travel to Antarctica? When Fedorchuk was asked to travel to Antarctica, the offer caught him totally off guard. A friend of his – a biologist – was supposed to go on the expedition, but in

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a month, and because he was invited to join the expe- noted that at the time, back in Moscow – whose winter dition on such short notice, he needed all the time he coincides with Antarctica’s summer – temperatures were could get to prepare. sinking to nearly -30; Antarctica was practically toasty by The sea voyage from Cape Town to the coast where he comparison. collected his samples took just over two weeks, with several The samples Fedorchuk gathered are now on their way stops at peripheral stations along the way, Fedorchuk said. back to Moscow on the RAE vessel. When asked about life on the Academic Fedorov, he ex- “Once they’re here in June, we will be analyzing plained: “Well on the ship, all life depends on the meal them by determining DNA sequences of microbial com- schedule. Between meals, some expedition members had munities present in the samples collected by Victor and scientific programs and others didn’t. In the latter case, then we will go through an arduous process of bioinfor- you could sleep, read, watch movies, play table tennis, matics analysis of the data to identify differences and work out, etc.” commonalities between samples from different years,” Though he said that the RAE issues all expedition Severinov said. members with a set of gear in order to stay warm, he In the absence of conclusive results, asked about his added that summers in Antarctica are surprisingly mild, most thrilling takeaway from the expedition, Fedorchuk the 11th hour, had to back out. The expedition urgently noting that the daytime temperatures where he was said: “My personal experience, of course. Because much of needed a replacement, and Fedorchuk was recommended. working typically hovered above zero degrees Celsius. He what I did there, I had never done before in my life.” When he first learned about the offer, he said that the pa- perwork and preparation seemed daunting. “Then I realized that this is the sort of opportunity that Universities. Countries. Continents. comes once in a lifetime and you have to take hold of it,” In only the past year, Skoltech postgraduate students made 86 visits to international research centers and laborato- he said. “I realized that I couldn’t afford not to get in- ries. The United States attracted the largest number of internships, with 28 trips to the Massachusetts Institute of volved in this adventure.” Technology, the University of Southern California, Boston University, Harvard University, and the National Institutes Some expedition members boarded the RAE vessel of Health. Skoltech students also spent time at universities in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, It- – the “Academic Fedorov” – in St. Petersburg, while aly, China, Canada, Chile and Israel, among other destinations. The average trip lasted between two and six months. others flew down to Cape Town to board the ship once From September 2016 to September 2017, Skoltech students participated in 122 international scientific conferences and symposia in Europe, the United States, and countries in the Asia-Pacific region. it arrived. Fedorchuk was in the latter camp, noting that the voyage from Russia to South Africa would take

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Pekka Viljakainen: // The only way we can keep the best people in the Skolkovo ecosystem is by having the best ecosystem//

The Senior Advisor to the Presi- of course a technological education eigners, how to build trust with differ- dent of the Skolkovo Foundation is about understanding technology and ent cultures; are you curious enough to and founder of the Startup Village the future of it, but still, my expectation understand what others are doing, or do project talks about the Skolkovo is that they are ready and willing to be you just want to rely on what you know ecosystem, what the startup involved in global interactions, because about your Helsinki or your Moscow or mindset is and what a modern the world of technology is global. your Novosibirsk? team has to look like. You see, there are a lot of people My second expectation is you should who think that these global capabilities understand basic logic about how hat are your expec- boil down to being able to speak a for- to make a business. A great product tations of Skoltech eign language, but that’s not the case. or innovation alone is not enough; sales graduates? I’m from Finland, and 99% of Finns knowledge alone is not enough. You must My number one ex- speak English. But perhaps 5% of Finns have both. You also have to have a basic pectation is that these are able to do international business. understanding of the timeline of the life people must have an international mind- So this is not about the language; it’s cycle of the business. That’s why I’m also set. Of course Skoltech is about science; about how to build trust between for- heavily supportive of the Skolkovo edu- SKOLTECH 140 141 EXCELLENT EDUCATION INTERVIEW

cational hub with Skoltech and the Mos- ing the best ecosystem. The idea that we have such an ecosystem that will attract this is the main difference and that’s If you are able to go to the global than if you are just five engineers sit- cow School of Management Skolkovo, so can buy people by giving them the most people to stay here. And luckily, we now why – once again – the hub connects market, you have to make your compa- ting in Moscow, speaking Russian and that the tech people of the world have a money is not sustainable. This Skolkovo have evidence of this. Three years ago, Skoltech with surrounding business ny international in the very early phase. sharing a Russian mentality. broader scope of knowledge, extending ecosystem needs to be good for living, selling an open field saying here there schools. This is something that we And of course if you’re a small startup, beyond technological excellence. housing, transportation, train and sub- will be a school when there was only dirt have to work on. you don’t have the money to make big What industries are the most start- My third expectation is related to way connections, parking, restaurants, – that was difficult. Other than that, I think we are ex- offices or branch offices in the United up-friendly today? leadership. In Russia and in many plac- good food… we have to be competitive. tremely competitive in the global arena. States or Europe, but a good start is In Russia, we could have much more es in the world, there’s this idea of one Right now, we’re not at the begin- How is Skoltech similar and different a team with international people. consumer-driven products, i.e. retail, strong leader – one great hero. For ex- ning, we’re not complete; we’re some- from the world’s best tech schools? What are your favorite Skoltech stu- If you have a colleague from a uni- gaming, and entertainment, as opposed ample, when people talk about Sber- where in the middle. We have kids at- The ecosystem is all about people; the dent startups? versity exchange from Britain or Hel- to business-to-business startups. Anoth- bank, everyone thinks of Herman Gref. tending grade school in the Skolkovo people are all the same. Whether you There is a number of interesting proj- sinki or Boston, invite them to be part er quickly growing area is the internet But we are talking about an organization Gymnasium, we have people living have a Chinese girl or an American ects. But specifically to your question, of your business. You have to learn of things. There is much left to be in- with tens of thousands of employees. If in the flats at Skolkovo, we have swim- boy, the same age – they are pretty if I would have chosen by now any par- how to lead your team. You will have a vented, such as increasing manufactur- you take Apple, for example, Steve Jobs ming pools up and running, we have much the same. We all want to have ticular company I would have already virtual team where messages are writing capabilities. was a micromanager for sure, but the parking places and roads — and this food and a safe place for our children. invested into it. And this you would ten in English and your employees are success of Apple is the product of thou- wasn’t the case five years ago. So basically, this generation – our know for sure! not in shouting distance. It’s important How do you think Skoltech will change sands of brilliant technological minds The beauty of the startup commu- potential audience for Skoltech – is to work in such an environment where once we move into the new campus? working together. I think this under- nity and the beauty of the ecosystem is more united, than the one from 20 What is typical of a successful startup? you are not so close, but still you’re I would say that you will move to one standing must be embedded into the that it’s 100% transparent. It is what you years ago. The leader and the founders are not mentally close. I have worked like this of the finest campus buildings in the minds of Skoltech students. see, what you feel. It’s not just what Mr. When it comes to Skoltech or to afraid of anything. When they wake for 20 years. With my colleagues, we world. It’s like the Enterprise starship [Skolkovo Foundation President Victor] the Skolkovo ecosystem, it’s clear that up in the morning, when they open have Telegram chats every day, video from Star Trek. What opportunities do the best gradu- Vekselberg says, or what Pekka says, or there are a lot of scientific people in their eyes, their first thought is not: meetings when needed. I don’t even Still, I want for Skoltech to be able ates with the most promising startups Prime Minister [Dmitry] Medvedev says – this ecosystem. If I walk around at a Who will cheat me? Who will steal think about what country I wake up in. to keep the feeling of a small univer- have when it comes to getting their it’s very concrete. It’s physical. That’s both business school event at Stanford or in from me? This is a very different I might be in Paris and have to talk to sity. The university should be about companies off the ground within the the bad side and the good side; because Helsinki or Seoul, I would see a lot of mentality. Having no fear is about not guys in Miami and Moscow and Stock- people, not about the hierarchy. Other Skolkovo ecosystem? every problem is very visible. people who are talking about the busi- being afraid of people. You have to holm. And this is totally normal. universities will also probably visit the The only way we can keep the best peo- But also all the good things are very ness of sales and marketing. Here you have the guts to have smarter people With an international team, your new campus, which will help Skoltech ple in the Skolkovo ecosystem is by hav- visible, and that’s why I think we will see more technological people. I think work for you. likelihood of success is much higher retain its international nature.

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Nina Mazyavkina: // I made up my mind—new town, new college, new start—just go for it//

The president of the Skoltech active. He was attending the annual ter: Dzmitry Tsetserukou. At the mo- Student Council talks about how Skolkovo StartUp Tour when he first ment, we’re developing a virtual reality the institute’s young scientists heard about Skoltech. I looked at the simulator that can be used to train nurs- and entrepreneurs spend their website and really liked what I saw. At es. Right now, I’m attempting to create downtime, and the values form- that point, I didn’t know that Russia had a reinforcement-learning model for this ing within Skoltech’s walls. such top-flight educational institutions. simulator, meaning I’m trying to use my I was thrilled, and for a year I only had IT knowledge at a practical level. ina, would you mind tell- one thing on my mind: “Skoltech.” I got ing us why you chose in the first time, which I was really hap- How did you become president of the Skoltech? py about. Now I’m a second year MSc Student Council? I did my bachelor’s de- student studying IT & Data Science. There are two levels in the Student gree in Rostov-on-Don Council: one is more representation- and studied in the faculty of mechan- Which projects are you pursuing at al: foreign students, MSc students and ics and mathematics at the Southern Skoltech? PhD students. The second rung of the Federal University (SFU). I heard about I’m not a typical IT student because my Student Council hierarchy includes Skoltech from my dad; he’s very pro- scientific advisor is from the Space Cen- the president, the vice president, and

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the secretary. In order to move to the is president of the Academic Council second rung, you have to work for a at SFU. And I decided that if she could year in the Student Council. Last year, do that, why couldn’t I? When I got in, I became a member of the Student I immediately came up with the idea of Council and focused on club activi- organizing a club festival. At the time, ties. At the end of last year, we had an Skoltech didn’t have a very active club internal vote and I was elected pres- scene. There was a good discussion ident. Honestly, I don’t know why I club with an amazing president, a girl was chosen in particular. I guess peo- from Korea. But beyond that, the club ple see that I’m genuinely interested scene wasn’t particularly well devel- in Skoltech, that I care about the stu- oped, and I wanted to give it a kick- dents, and that I really want Skoltech start. We organized the club festival to become a truly fantastic university. with the aim of telling the Skoltech The potential’s there; we just have to community about the existing clubs take advantage of it. and inspiring them to create new ones. Everything turned out great, everyone Have you always been a leader? had a wonderful time, and since then, When I lived in Rostov, I had a pret- several clubs have been created. ty passive attitude to life for my first three years of study. But when I got Our conversation is punctured by into Skoltech, I suddenly realized that I the bounce of a tennis ball, and on wouldn’t be a student forever, and that the doors I see a poster for a yoga maybe I wouldn’t ever have the chance club. It’s clear a lot of things are go- to lead an active student life again. I ing on. What are some other kinds made up my mind: new town, new in- of clubs? stitute, new start; just go for it. I had a There’s a certain pattern: at the be- good example to go by: my best friend ginning of the year, most people, es- in Rostov is a very proactive girl, and pecially first year students, are full of

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energy and ready to set up clubs. First meet people and make friends. No one How is student week organized? FIRST DAY year students send us a load of propos- knows where we’ll be in 5-10 years. We have a University 24/7 concept; the The President of als, from Japanese language clubs to You might just walk into a German university is open around the clock. And Skoltech Alexander data science clubs. There are always a language club and meet the future I can see that students love being here. Kuleshov and Associate lot of initiatives. But after classes start president of Yandex or some other Students don’t just come to attend class- Provost, Dean and people realize that there’s a big corporation. And, of course, it’s an ex- es, but to meet up with their friends, soak of Education Anna workload, the frenzy often disappears. cellent opportunity to kick back and up the Skoltech atmosphere, just be here. Derevnina opening the Right now, we’re continuing a tradition: build a student community. They spend all day and even evening new academic year last year people went to the gym at the here. I have a friend who loves to work 2017–2018 Moscow School of Management to play Do Skoltech students have any dis- nights. He’s been known to spend up to volleyball, soccer, there was yoga; last tinctive features? three days at a stretch here. There’s an year there was pretty much everything. Yeah, I’d say we’re already a brand. atmosphere at Skoltech that stimulates improve their workspace, for instance, We’re planning to host another club fes- I think that, firstly, students who know creative thinking and immersion. No one I’ll advocate for them and promote them tival soon to foster exciting new ideas. exactly what they want to do are confi- considers Saturday to be a day off; only as I would my own ideas. I think that dent; they’ve got plans. They have solid on Sundays are there fewer people here. students make the university. Without So Skoltech gives every student the critical thinking skills and they’re always Students often prefer to come here rather students, there would be no university, opportunity to share their ideas and ready to get into a healthy debate. An- than stay at home. which is why it’s important to give them get in touch with like-minded people? other really important thing: people here a chance to speak up. Yes, and I really encourage that. When aren’t into showing off. They’re really How are relations with the university I met this year’s incoming students on open and also just very interesting peo- administration? How does the Skoltech atmosphere the first day of the new term, I tried ple. Everyone’s doing something outside At the beginning of August, we met with manifest itself? Do you guys have to explain to them why this is import- of study: playing musical instruments, Skoltech President Alexander Kuleshov. any unwritten rules that you fol- ant. I always cite as an example the drawing, sports… Last year we held a We shared our plans and ideas, and he low? Massachusetts Institute of Technolo- Skoltech talent show for both students gave us suggestions. We told him how Every new group of students brings gy, where there are more than thirty and staff members. It was incredible. we envision the Student Council. I don’t something of its own. Of course, we clubs and they’re booming. Many stu- There were dances, gymnastics, people want students to be shy about express- have our little particularities and tra- dents came here from other cities and played musical instruments and per- ing their opinions about the university. ditions: for example, in Room 404 all countries. Clubs are a fantastic way to formed their own songs. If students come to me with proposals to computers are always occupied. It’s

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Ido Nativ, Community Communications Manager The Student Life Office is committed to the support and development of our student body as a community by itself, and as part of the whole Skoltech and Skolkovo community. We aspire to create together with the students an atmosphere of creativity, curiosity, ingenuity and self-efficacy. In practice, the Student Life Team takes care of all extracurricular activities, including social activities, sport activities, clubs and Everyone’s doing customary to arrive and agree in ad- are people on the third floor who students in their first year, so there other services. To do so, the Student Life Office works closely vance to use someone’s computer. IT write various rules for students, think aren’t all that many opportunities for with the Student Council, and the two bodies complement each something outside students often need to calculate things, up things, but students aren’t partic- interactions like this. other in their work for the students. and there are powerful computers ularly involved. As a representative of study: playing We are working together with our alumni on creating a long-last- there. of the student community, I’m often What are your personal plans for the ing network of cooperation within the Skoltech-alumni-Skolko- musical instruments, asked: what do students want? I can future? vo trifecta. drawing, sports What’s new this year and what would guess, but it’s important to hear real I always dreamed of developing com- Another important role of the office is to support internation- you like to say to applicants? concerns. I want to organize regular puter games. I’m still holding onto al students with their unique needs. We help them get their My task this year is to inspire students meetings so that those who have al- this dream, but after having taken bearings in Moscow and in Skolkovo, we introduce them to the to get into extracurricular activities ready been here for a year or two can Data Science courses, that field struck Russian culture, and we take care of the bureaucratic aspects so that they realize how exciting and share their insights and experiences my interest. Therefore, at the mo- of being a foreign student. cool they are. Plus, I want students to with the entering class. Second year ment, I am trying to combine these get involved in life at Skoltech. There students aren’t at Skoltech as often as two areas in my scientific work.

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Denis Stolyarov: // We support any productive student initiative and provide resources//

SKOLTECH is a private higher learning institution. The university Head of student recruitment and has a state license to carry out ed- gram won’t merely spend two years selection at Skoltech Denis Stol- ucational activity and government sitting at their desks. Rather, they will yarov talks about recruitment and accreditation of educational pro- lay a foundation for a brilliant career student life at the institute. grams. There are no state-funded in science or tech. The only thing that places, but Skoltech finances the can guarantee a successful start is studies of everyone who passes et’s imagine that I’m a stu- a high-quality, world-class education. the entry exams and provides them dent seeking a science, with stipends. Graduates receive Skoltech is part of a group of in- tech or engineering educa- two diplomas: a State Diploma stitutes carrying out cutting-edge re- tion. Why would I choose of Education and Master’s Quali- search. Our students work with profes- Skoltech? fication and a Skoltech Master of sors who are published in the leading It’s simple. First, it’s about the quality Science degree with a European global scientific journals and all of our of education. It’s important to us that diploma supplement. lecturers have work experience in the students who enter our master’s pro- world’s top universities.

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Second, I would point to the unique- novation module. These disciplines One of our ly-equipped Skoltech laboratories. are taught to all students, regardless They’re available to all our students of their programs. One of the mod- objectives is for research. At other universities, stu- ule’s most interesting courses is the dents are often not even allowed near Innovation Workshop; it’s based on for students to important laboratory equipment. an accelerator model. My third point has to do with In this course, students must put develop their ideas R&D internships. Our students are together a team, come up with an and projects and required to do two-month intern- idea and, by the end of the term, ships in specialized departments turn the idea into a product or tech- become employers of companies, where they are com- nology. They then do a presentation pletely immersed in the process of for our professors and guest experts, themselves, technological research and develop- who may be from, say, venture capi- ment. Among our partners are high- tal funds. We also offer students sup- creating job tech industry representatives like port with establishing startups. For Yandex, Sberbank, Boeing, Rostec, example, we teach patent law and opportunities in Lukoil and other Russian and inter- other legal support issues related to national companies. business activities. high-tech sectors Real companies often emerge How do you develop entrepreneur- from these training projects, which of the economy ial skills and motivate students to the founders continue to develop. If a create their own projects? Or do student is successful in this, they can you recruit motivated students gain access to the Skolkovo Founda- from the outset? tion’s capabilities. When a company As for entrepreneurial skills, we like that becomes a Skolkovo res- strongly emphasize their importance. ident – and we have precedents for In the Skoltech education process, this – it gets access to all the relevant there is an Entrepreneurship and In- infrastructure.

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One of our objectives is for students ry (New Mexico, United States). If your places but in one program. It’s just that In the Elective Courses and Projects Skoltech students have a lot of per- to develop their ideas and projects academic advisor gives their approval, different modules are studied at differ- module, students can take courses from sonal projects. Is this thanks to An important point and become employers themselves, Skoltech will get you there, all expens- ent institutions. Some of the courses Skoltech’s entire course catalogue. For Skoltech, or does the university ini- we look into during creating job opportunities in high-tech es paid: tickets, accommodations, in- are at Skoltech, while others are at our example, a student in the Biotechnology tially recruit only those students who sectors of the economy. surance, etc. As a rule, the host party is partner universities. Upon completion, program can take a course from the Data are motivated and driven to achieve? the interview is all for it. Talented students arrive at no the student writes one dissertation and, Science program. And vice-versa. The I think it’s a combination of factors. motivation. Students Skoltech has academic mobility additional cost, ready to carry out joint if they defend it successfully, receives whole logic and structure of Skoltech I’ll repeat that, on the one hand, we programs. How do they work? research projects. diplomas from two organizations. education is based on a multidisciplinary recruit motivated people. On the oth- tell us why they want We have several key international ac- approach. er, the opportunities Skoltech pro- to enroll in our MSc ademic partners. First on the list is, Skoltech also offers a number of At Skoltech, students choose their Nowadays, all the most innovative vides contribute significantly to the undoubtedly, the Massachusetts Insti- online educational programs that al- own courses. The same practice is ideas are born at the nexus of several development of their own projects, programs. We want tute of Technology (MIT). You could low combined instruction at several widespread at Western universities. different spheres, and the possibility of ideas and initiatives. to see people who call MIT our older brother, as Skoltech universities. How does that work? How does that work? acquiring knowledge from different sci- Skoltech’s official stance is to con- was founded through close cooper- Skoltech has numerous online pro- Yes, the structure of our education pro- entific fields allows students to dore- tribute as much as possible to the de- clearly envision their ation with the legendary university. grams with partner universities. In- gram is based on the Western model. markable things. velopment of additional activity not future professional or Currently, many of our students at all cluded among these partners are the Students must accumulate 120 cred- directly related to the education pro- stages of study are working on joint Moscow Institute of Physics and Tech- its [ECTS credits, the European Credit Would this not lead to a situation gram, but nonetheless concerning academic path programs and projects with their col- nology (MIPT), the Higher School of Transfer System] in two years of full- where students acquire a lot of su- students’ professional activities. For leagues in Cambridge. Economics and several federal univer- time study at the master’s level. The perficial knowledge at the cost of instance, our robotics team’s partici- That said, if we take a look at the sities, including the Immanuel Kant education program is made up of sev- profound learning in a single area? pation in the Eurobot competitions is bigger picture, our students have the Baltic Federal University, the Far East- eral modules. The first is Compulsory No. If students take on a course, organized and financed by Skoltech. opportunity to go to any university ern Federal University and Kazan Fed- Courses. These are the courses that they must study and successfully in the world via the academic mobil- eral University. form the core of every program. complete it. And we naturally ad- How do international applicants find ity program. For example, say you’re The implementation of the online There’s the Entrepreneurship and vise our students to always turn to out about the university? And how do studying Photonics and Quantum Ma- education program assumes that if two Innovation module that I’ve already their academic advisors for help and you recruit them? terials and, for your MSc dissertation, students have entered Skoltech and, discussed. The rest is based on the guidance. They are mentors for our Currently, international students com- you need to carry out research in the for instance, MIPT in the same subject chosen professional trajectory of each students and help them make in- prise about 20% of the Skoltech student famous Los Alamos National Laborato- area, they can study in two different student. formed choices. body. We have a lot of professors who

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Skoltech’s official do not speak Russian, and just as many It’s important to convey all of in a scientific field and can explain why students. This doesn’t bother anyone, as your achievements on the form, par- exactly Skoltech can help them pursue AT A GLANCE stance is to our official language of communication ticularly when it comes to publica- their dreams. is English. As soon as students cross the tions and participation in academic In the 2017 application campaign, the Skoltech Master’s pro- .gramme received, on average, 15 applicants per place, though in contribute as much threshold of Skoltech, we expect them competitions. We then shortlist all Setting academia aside for a moment, several courses there were as many as 30. as possible to the to communicate in English. That’s why appealing candidates, and invite all what can Skoltech students do in their language is one of the important criteria shortlisted applicants to participate free time? In 2018, Skoltech will move to a new campus currently under development of in the selection process. in a two-day admissions process. Skoltech has a lot of clubs and societ- .construction at the Skolkovo Innovation Center. additional activity not As for the recruitment of interna- During this process, applicants take ies based on shared interests, including By 2020, 1,200 postgraduate students will study at Skoltech. tional students: we are actively devel- exams in various areas. All applicants sports, dance, discussion, music, lan- . directly related to the oping international networking in the take a mathematics exam, and the guage and, of course, tech. The standard stipend of the Skoltech Master’s programme is 40,000. rubles. That number can increase to 50,000 rubles during academic sphere, and our internation- other exams are course-dependent. We support any productive student education program, the first year of study and 55,000 during the second. Stipend level al students recommend Skoltech to After that, each applicant conducts initiative and provide resources. We depends on academic success. but nonetheless their friends. an interview with professors. These believe that effective study requires a tend to take about 20-30 minutes. comfortable environment. Extracurricu- All students of military age are provided with an official military concerning students’ service. deferment. Would you mind speaking about the During interviews, candidates must lar activities are a very important com- professional admissions process in general? present themselves and talk about ponent of that comfort. activities. The application process is as follows. their research and their academic On the apply.skoltech.ru site, you have and professional achievements. On to fill out a form that has several im- the second day, we hold an English portant features. First, references. Ref- proficiency exam. WELCOME! erence letters must be attached, and An important point we look into we advise that one of them be from the during the interview is motivation. In the 2017-2018 academic year, 251 graduate students swelled the ranks of the Skoltech student body, including applicant’s current academic advisor Students tell us why they want to en- 4 visiting students and 47 international students from Mexico, Brazil, Greece, and India, among others (24 in their bachelor’s program. It’s worth roll in our MSc programs. We want countries in total). According to the results of the latest competitive recruitment process, the Data Science, Bio- technology, Space and Engineering Systems, and Materials Science Master’s degree programs are in high demand looking into any case where a current to see people who clearly envision among international students. advisor is unwilling to vouch for his or their future professional or academic her student. path, can tell us about their interests

SKOLTECH 158 159 EXCELLENT EDUCATION #CHANGINGTHEWORLD #PHOTONICS #ROBOTICS #QUANTUMMATERIALS #ENERGYSYSTEMS #DNAEDITING #SPACEWEATHER chan g in the world

SKOLTECH 160 #3 162 SUCCESS STORY SERGEY SHMAKOV: //Working with human embryos 186 STARTUP EKATERINA KOTENKO-LENGOLD: //I was 14 years poses a lot of ethical questions// old when I began studying IT//

168 SUCCESS STORY TATIANA PODLADCHIKOVA: //We have to take space weather forecasts into account in our daily plans// 188 STARTUP TOP-5 SKOLTECH STARTUPS

170 SUCCESS STORY LEYLA ISMAILOVA: //Be interested in what’s going on 192 CONFERENCE RUSSIAN-GERMAN SYMPOSIUM / INNOVATION around you and be proactive when it comes to taking new WORKSHOP / SHAPING THE FUTURE initiatives//

200 PROJECT IVAN OSELEDETS: //Soil is a complex system in which 172 SUCCESS STORY MIKHAIL BELYAEV: //For us, all challenges are chemical, physical and biological processes take place mathematical// simultaneously//

//It would be exciting to find 178 SUCCESS STORY EKATERINA KHRAMEEVA: //The electric vehicle market will be a set of molecules to help us think better// 206 PROJECT ARTEM ABAKUMOV: worth 4.5 trillion dollars by 2030//

182 LAB TO MARKET EVGENY TSYKUNOV: //A box with a smartphone inside could fly from the warehouse shelf directly to a customer’s home// 210 ARTIFACT SESSION THROUGH THE PRISM OF A ROMANESCO SUCCESS STORY

Biologist and Skoltech PhD candi- cations aimed at treating both heredi- We had a modelling course, and a is now my academic advisor. His sub- date Sergey Shmakov shares some tary and acquired diseases. friend and I began brainstorming how jects interested literally everyone, and insights about his scientific jour- to model live cells. You could say that during the summer holidays we agreed ney, genome editing technology, How did your early education influ- was the start of my path toward bioin- to try working on a project together. his hopes for the future and how he ence your career? formatics. Then I took coursework that strikes a good work-life balance. I attended a typical secondary school in involved modeling a multilevel security When did you enter Skoltech? Voskresensk [near Moscow]. I was influ- system. While completing this course, When I finished bioinformatics school, I enome editing is one of enced by my parents and, of course, my I was inspired by books and lectures was grappling with what to do next. I felt the most promising ar- grandmother. She was a math teacher, on the structure of human and animal that the only way to continue building eas of modern biology. In and that left a strong imprint on me. In central nervous systems. I wrote a dis- my career at Microsoft would have been the 20th century, it was school, I was really into computer and sertation entitled “Fuzzy Logic Control- to move to Denmark or the United States, used in pharmacology, to information sciences. But our school lers for Financial Market Objectives.” where the company’s largest offices are produce human insulin, for instance. had an in-depth biology class. Its key Essentially, I wrote an expert program located. On the other hand, bioinformat- Nowadays, thanks to discoveries in bio- distinction was the teachers, who were that made decisions based on known ics offered fundamental challenges and informatics and advances in molecular known for being excellent educators, input data. After graduating from uni- the opportunity to work with extremely biology, the potential of genome edit- so I opted for that path. Upon nearing versity, I accepted a job at Microsoft interesting people. In the end, I chose ing has revealed itself to be nearly lim- graduation, I applied to Bauman Mos- Russia, where I worked for six years, bioinformatics when Professor Severinov itless: from developing hypoallergenic cow State Technical University. until 2014. suggested I enroll in the Skoltech post- fruit and vegetables that are resistant graduate program. to pests and can be preserved several What course did you choose at the How did you decide to return to sci- times longer, to human genetic modifi- university? ence? And that was followed by a joint proj- When the time came to choose a depart- I couldn’t let go of the ideas and pur- ect with Eugene Koonin, an expert in ment and a course, I applied to Informa- suits I had developed at university. In computational evolutionary biology tion Security but enrolled in Software 2012, I entered the Yandex School of at the National Center for Biotechnol- and Information Technologies. Data Analysis in Bioinformatics. At that ogy Information in the United States, Sergey Shmakov time, Professor Mikhail Gelfand was in for which you received the National How did you move from Computer charge. The lecture course was taught Institutes of Health [NIH] Director’s // Working with human embryos poses a lot of ethical questions// Science to Biology in university? by Professor Konstantin Severinov, who Award. What was that project about?

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We created a pipeline [a chain of trans- into a cassette, which helps bacteria to CRISPR systems: types 5a, 5b, 5c and researchers found several more. I think that a high stipend is an incredible advan- formation processes based on input data] eventually become resistant to a virus 6, with corresponding proteins Cpf1, that’s how this work will continue. tage, as you don’t get distracted from your to analyze databases in order to search that has the same DNA sequence as the C2c1, C2c3 and C2c2. I recall that we But I agree with my colleagues who studies by frequent financial issues. On the for new CRISPR/Cas systems. Our pipe- one written in the spacer. The subjects started our search with Cas1 protein say that the main players in the CRISPR other hand, it can also relax you: why go line analyzed data in the database after of our search were nuclei that cut DNA and published our work in 2015. In systems have already been discovered somewhere else if they pay you well here? we gave it examples that interested us. viruses. This is very important and use- the second study, we changed the data and that the addition of new proteins The algorithm ranks proteins that are lo- ful from the perspective of improving set and took located CRISPR cassettes won’t radically change the big picture. Tell us a little about the study itself. cated next to the right area according to potential genome editing. from the point where we’d started our The recently-added types 4, 5 and 6 My program is made up of modules certain criteria, and then we review the search in the database. have a prevalence of around 1.5%, if we and different specialized courses. For result and select the data that interests Is your program available to other re- We launched a pipeline with cassette consider all bacteria and archaea. instance, Professor Pyotr Sergiev from us. When we were writing the algorithm, searchers? Does it have any counter- data and found several more system Moscow State University taught a course we started from paradigms of gene col- parts? types. We discussed the fairly interest- Interesting. Switching gears now: how on molecular biology, and there were location that have a common function. It’s not a full-fledged program; it doesn’t ing data we’d acquired at a conference difficult was it to enroll in Skoltech? courses on stem cells and other lines of If there is a CRISPR/Cas cassette with have an interface, only data transforma- last summer, while the paper came out The competition was fairly high. There study as well. a set of spacers separated by repeats, tion algorithms. The pipeline is written just recently in January of this year in were exams for various courses and a then there must be CRISPR/Cas genes for direct work with databases and is Nature Reviews. Publishing a paper is a tough English test. Did all students have similar areas of nearby. First we took Cas1 protein. In not intended for remote work, such as fairly lengthy process due to stringent study? the future, the CRISPR/Cas system will by using a web interface. editorial requirements. Was it difficult to combine your stud- No, not always. We were given time to use these resources to recognize foreign There are no available programs ies with your work at Microsoft? decide on an area of study and later DNA and destroy viruses. In all, this with that functionality because we How much has yet to be discovered Studying at Skoltech is intensive. work. There were a lot of meetings and process helped us discover four new wrote algorithms to search for the spe- in this field? Do you think it’s likely I found that I needed to dedicate nearly discussions with lecturers and profes- CRISPR/Cas systems. cific traits of CRISPR/Cas systems in all that there will be unexpected devel- all my time to my studies, and ultimate- sors from Russia and abroad. One of available genomes and metagenomes opments and entirely new proteins? ly I had to quit my job. Skoltech’s strong points is its inclusive- Why did you take Cas1 protein spe- available at the NIH. On the one hand, the list of open proteins ness. Soon we’ll have our own laborato- cifically? and system types is constantly expanding. Did you live on your stipend alone? ry for research in the field of biotechnol- Because it’s the most conservative pro- What did you discover? First we described four, then we pub- The Skoltech stipend is quite generous – ogy. That will be really nice: before we tein of the entire system. It’s part of the During the implementation of the first lished the next study, where we described it was only slightly lower than the salary had to send graduate students to other adaptation module of spacer integration study, we discovered four new types of several more types. Another group of I was earning at Microsoft. I have to say laboratories in Russia and abroad.

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There were a lot What was it like to work with one of had started working with experimental wards– it was a big boost of confidence monitor things, it’s just far easier to col- Another field is embryo editing, not the most well-known Russian scien- laboratories that received our data about and strong motivation to keep moving laborate in person. The problem is that necessarily for humans; you can also edit of meetings and tists, Konstantin Severinov? the candidates. The moment the paper forward with my work. we have too great of a time difference. animal genomes. For instance, to create discussions with That’s an interesting question. When was released, we already knew that our When it’s daytime in Russia, it’s still night cows with milk that contains essential I began study in the bioinformatics discovery indeed existed, worked and Who else won the award with you? there. And vice-versa. Sending e-mails nutrients. lecturers and school, I didn’t know anything about was a subject of interest for other sci- It was given to the entire team: Koon- isn’t convenient, because you have to A lot of ethical problems arise when Konstantin. Now I can say that work- entists. That’s why there weren’t any in, Kira Makarova, Yury Vulf and I. They wait a day to get a response. There, all working with human embryos, because professors from ing with him is very interesting. He’s an doubts as to the validity of the data. Of gave us a large framed document stating you have to do is knock on the next door. any modification can give advantages Russia and abroad. open person and not limited to his area course I had some anxiety about the fol- that we had done some excellent work. relative to normal people. of expertise. lowing paper as well, but it wasn’t too Meanwhile, you’re continuing study If genome editing methods are abused, One of Skoltech’s I can tell you that scientists I’ve had bad; when there’s a lot of work to be What changed after the awards cer- at Skoltech? this will negatively affect population di- strong points is its the privilege of working with have been done, there’s no time to waste on nerves. emony? Yes, right now I’m getting ready to de- versity. For instance, if everyone makes established and well-known in their Essentially, nothing, but that award fend my PhD dissertation which, unfor- their children blue-eyed and blond-haired inclusiveness fields of study. As supervisors, they want How did you feel when you learned you motivated us to keep working and gave tunately, has limited my work oppor- along with other preset parameters, for results. On Friday of every week I draw had won the NIH Director’s Award? us a public response. We’ve gotten tunities. But after that we have several example, metabolism or body propor- up mini reports of what has been done in When the letter arrived announcing I noticed, and that’s good for receiving more projects that I’d like to complete. tions, that can lead to human populations the past week and what is planned for the had won, I didn’t think too much of it. I grants and money for further research becoming vulnerable to pathogens that next. When I began work with Eugene, it figured it was just another nod of approv- in the laboratory. What do you think the future holds exploit the uniformity of the species. started to take me about an hour to draw al. But later, when information about for your research? Something similar occurred during up those reports, because he asked me to the award began to spread around the You work a lot in the United States, CRISPR/Cas systems can be utilized in the uncontrolled spread of antibiotics, describe everything in greater detail. NIH and beyond, people I didn’t know, in Koonin’s laboratory. Is this neces- several fields. First of all, there’s gene which were taken in the 1950s and 1960s whom I’d only met in the corridors, be- sary for your research? therapy. There are no fundamental prob- for practically everything. In the end, we Were you nervous before your first gan to congratulate me. The award is When Eugene and I began working to- lems, as it doesn’t change the structure accelerated the evolution of pathogenic publication? Were there any doubts quite prestigious and demonstrates the gether, he set the condition that I had of the entire genome, but treats sepa- bacteria with resistance to antibiotics. or suspicions about the data? importance of the study. The ceremony to work for at least three years. We had rate cells in the adult body. For instance, It’s important to understand that a During the publication process, we al- took place at the NIH, in the main hall. something like a contract, which is why there already are methods of gene ther- CRISPR/Cas system is a tool, and how it ready knew we’d found a working CRIS- Though the award has no monetary in February 2018 I’ll continue to work at apy at the primary stage of clinical trials will be used is a decision that everyone PR/Cas system. Before publication we benefits – no prize money or other re- his laboratory. I don’t have to go there to for oncological diseases. will have to make.

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The assistant professor of the established by the renowned Russian system is full of solar wind and the so- We already have to take space weath- Skoltech Space Center shares scientist Alexander Chizhevsky. He said lar magnetic field. Because the Sun re- er forecasts into account in our daily her thoughts on the importance that Earth is always in the embrace of the volves, the magnetic field in interplan- plans. In 1859, a powerful geomagnetic of space weather and the Sun sun. And the mood of the Sun is trans- etary space assumes the form of wavy storm disabled the entire telegraph sys- for our daily lives. mitted to Earth through these embraces. spiral folds, like the multi-layered skirt tem in North America and Europe, and Dynamic events on the Sun influence of a ballerina. Earth and every planet certain devices that were disconnected hen you want to un- both humans and the operation of techno- in the solar system inhabit these folds. from communication lines continued to derstand something logical systems. Space exploration, which Thus, we live in the Sun’s atmosphere, be charged directly from the atmosphere. at the beginning of has been undertaken relatively recently, part of an inextricable link between In 1988, a geomagnetic storm triggered a journey, you don’t has led to the emergence of a scientific space and humanity. a massive power failure in Canada, leav- know what’s driving field that studies space or solar weather. On 23 November 2015, at the 12th ing six million people without heating, you. Standing by a river, we can watch Today, space weather forecasting is used European Space Weather Week in Bel- power and radio for nearly a day. On the water endlessly, look forever at the in many areas of human activity in space gium, I had the great honor of receiving 4 November 2015, a solar flare led to flames while sitting by a fire, and gaze and on Earth. Due to heightened solar the International Alexander Chizhevsky the interruption of air traffic over Swe- ceaselessly at the sky while lying on the activity, satellite television antennas and Medal for Space Weather and Space den due to the disruption of the radio ground on a starry night. My journey other equipment is temporarily turned Climate, which is awarded for “major and radar systems operations. Recently, began with the Sun. off, warnings are issued about the faulty contributions to space weather research on 6 September 2017, a powerful solar The idea of a link between humans operation of navigational devices, flight of those who were unafraid of risk and flare compelled ISS crew members to and the external environment arose in trajectories are changed, and all satellite followed uncharted paths in order to relocate to an onboard shelter. Cases of ancient myths and beliefs. A scientific maneuvers are halted. succeed.” I was lucky enough to work the disruption of rail network signaling study of these solar-terrestrial links was Solar wind is constantly leaking together with like-minded people who systems are well known, i.e. cases when from the solar corona, the Sun’s atmo- shared their profound knowledge with the railway signal spontaneously chang- sphere, in the form of charged parti- me. Together, we found the necessary es color from green to red. Knowledge of cles that blow over Earth and the other tools to create new space weather ser- space weather and its influence on hu- planets of our solar system. Solar wind vices, forecast solar activity and geo- mans and technology will make it possi- Tatiana Podladchikova: carries the Sun’s energy, and stretches magnetic storms, and also create an ble to understand when humans are safe and carries the solar magnetic field into effective model of the recovery of the in space and on Earth. I hope you’re all // We have to take space weather forecasts into account in our daily plans// outer space. As a result, the entire solar dynamics of Earth’s radiation belts. enjoying the nice space weather!

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A second-generation geologist, of-the-art Hydrocarbon Recovery Center. sions, according to Skoltech Assistant Pro- To conduct these studies, Ismailova senior research fellow and one In the interim, she published a host of fessor Dmitry Koroteev, an author of the and her team simulated the conditions of Skoltech’s emerging stars, articles in such prestigious internation- agreement. Ismailova will play a key role present deep in the Earth’s mantle. Leyla Ismailova is about to play al journals as Science Advances, Nature in this project, maintaining responsibility Such simulations are necessary because a very important scientific role in Communications, Nature Scientific Re- for measuring, analyzing and testing the they’re looking for information pertain- a cooperation with Gazprom Neft ports and American Mineralogist. physical and chemical properties of rocks ing to depths of 2,500 kilometers, while Ismailova has achieved feats in her and minerals using various lab techniques. the longest drill on earth can only reach he daughter of a field geol- young career that to many would seem She developed the relevant skillset depths of some 12 kilometers. ogist, Leyla Ismailova seems unfathomable. while earning her MSc at Lomonosov Ismailova attributes much of her to have been born with an in- “I’m still deciding whether I want to Moscow State University (MSU) – during professional success to the fact that nate passion for science and pursue a career in academia or in indus- which she focused on diamond formation – she had the foresight as a teenager a unidirectional work ethic. try,” she said. “This is one reason I was as well as during her PhD program at to choose an academic path that she By 16, she had chosen to follow in her attracted to Skoltech, because it bridges the University of Bayreuth in Germany, loved. “I’m proud that I’m still follow- father’s footsteps and enrolled in one of the gap between the two.” where she studied the effect of various ing that path that I chose for myself Russia’s leading university programs in The project Ismailova is currently en- elements on the physical and chemical when I was at university,” she said, Geology. A decade later, while many of gaged in is a prime example of the fu- properties of the Earth’s mantle. explaining that many of her universi- her peers were still grappling with what sion between these two spheres. In June, “From a scientific point of view, what ty friends realized during their studies to do with their lives, she has already Skoltech President Alexander Kuleshov I’m most proud of in my career thus far is that Geology wasn’t the right fit for earned her PhD from a prestigious uni- and Vadim Yakovlev, First Deputy CEO of a project that I did during my PhD study,” them, and ultimately opted instead to versity in Germany and landed a coveted Russian oil giant Gazprom Neft, signed a she said. “We found a stable mineral in pursue fields as diverse as fashion and research position with Skoltech’s state- cooperation agreement aimed at formaliz- the Earth’s mantle and also showed how consulting. ing a long-term partnership between the iron and iron oxidation states can change Beyond choosing a field they love Institute and the company. The planned the physical properties of mantle.” The re- and finding mentors who believe in cooperation will use machine learning in sulting paper can be found here. them, Ismailova has some simple, sage Leyla Ismailova: the context of big data to help resolve ar- In a subsequent study, Ismailova and advice for aspiring scientists: “Be inter- eas of uncertainty that industry profession- her team made a groundbreaking dis- ested in what’s going on around you // Be interested in what’s going on around you and be proactive when it als have long struggled with, and to help covery regarding the process of diamond and be proactive when it comes to tak- comes to taking new initiatives// oil companies make more optimal deci- formation near our planet’s core. ing new initiatives.”

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A computer science special- Mikhail, would you mind telling us according to different data. We now ist, Skoltech research fellow what school you went to? Did it spe- have a machine that can quickly give The current level Mikhail Belyaev told us about cialize in mathematics? answers for different combinations of of information his path to science, explained Not at all. I graduated from a typical parameters. We can input different pa- his work process with re- school with a general education program rameters or use special optimization al- technology makes it search data and explained in Ryazan, but I studied in a physics and gorithms to find the best option. As a possible to gather an how people can manage vari- mathematics class. Then I enrolled in a result, we have managed to reduce the ous devices using the power physics and technology institute in the weight of the capsule by 10%, without extensive database of thought. radio-frequency engineering and cyber- sacrificing its strength and security. of patients who netics department and studied data anal- ata analysis and ma- ysis and machine learning. I began partic- After graduating from the Moscow suffer from a chine learning expand ipating in industrial projects when I was Institute of Physics and Technology, particular disease, far beyond smile recog- still a student. I was able to design and you continued your scientific work nition in smartphones integrate machine learning algorithms and became an employee at the Insti- and then apply and individually target- for several large engineering companies. tution for Information Transmission advanced methods ed product displays. Big data helps Problems of the Russian Academy of companies save time and money on What projects have you worked on? Sciences and the Datadvance compa- of data analysis the development of high-tech prod- One of the tasks we have worked on in- ny, a spinoff of the Institute, where, ucts, defeat incurable diseases and volved a Formula 1 car. The heaviest part among other things, you led a project help paralyzed people interact with of the car is the safety capsule, where the to build a model for a cooling system the world. driver sits, around which a chassis is built. for nuclear power plants. Would you These formulas are based neither on say that machine learning could pre- aerodynamics nor on the knowledge vent a catastrophe like Chernobyl? of physical processes, but rather on the We had a more modest task. We made data that we gather from our experi- a prognostic model of how cooling sys- Mikhail Belyaev: ments. We have created a model that tems at nuclear power plants become works for different sets of parameters clogged. A water cooling system is usu- // For us, all challenges are mathematical// and can tell the strength of the capsule ally used at power plants. It consists of

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A headset reads a huge number of pipes through which The first part involves coming up with a Problems of the Russian Academy of modern level of information technology water flows and cools the steam used to mathematical method that allows you to Sciences. Why did you switch from makes it possible to gather an extensive Vladimir the patient’s rotate the turbines. Over time, this sys- build a model, and to make a program aviation and mechanical engineering database of patients who suffer from Zelman neurophysical tem begins to clog. Our client wanted that works the way we intended. The sec- to medicine? a particular disease (Alzheimer’s, Par- Skoltech to know if it was possible to analyze the ond part involves taking a specific task I am still engaged in mathematics and kinson’s or Huntington’s). You can use Professor indices and extent of the clogging using electromag- and data, applying the method we creat- data analysis. In medicine, just as in the advanced methods of data analysis to transforms his netic measurements outside of the pipes. ed to this data and solving the problem. case of problems in industrial design, solve problems in this area. This is what We created a model which reliably de- Engineers who work on creating a we develop analytical methods that are we are doing. “A tidal wave of new tech- thoughts into text scribes the degree of clogging within complex object always have a set of pa- adapted to a particular type of data, for Skoltech Professor Vladimir Zelman nology using advances in the system, using these measurements. rameters that need to be improved. It example: an MRI of the brain. We do said that the ENIGMA international con- physics led to the invention typed on a keyboard. All of our experience and developments, takes a very long time to immerse your- not cure but rather we try to analyze the sortium, which deals with the study of of new tools and tests that An immobilized which we used in projects with Formu- self in the specifics of the topic, to talk to data in order to diagnose the disease as the human brain, does not have enough have enabled scientists to la 1, Airbus and other clients, formed the engineer, read something, talk again early as possible, to simulate its develop- mathematicians. The material that they study the brain at work and person can type the basis of the algorithmic core of the and formulate the task of analyzing the ment and to evaluate the effectiveness of have gathered needs to be processed. start the process of decipher- a text without any pSeven program, which helps engineers data in such a way that it meets the needs therapeutic intervention. The Enigma project studies ana- ing thoughts using powerful without experience in data analysis im- of the client. That is, tied to the goal that Imagine that a doctor observes an tomical differences from the norm in computers. The ENIGMA international consortium (which physical effort prove the technical characteristics of is in the client’s head. Usually the project ill patient for a long period of time, for brain pathologies and tries to under- brings together 200 univer- products during the design phase. goes through several iterations. First you example, one to two years. It is import- stand where the parts of the genome sities from 37 countries), formulate a hypothesis, then you con- ant for the doctor to understand how are located that code the anatomy of where I serve as coordinator How much time does a project like duct experiments and you bring the re- the patient’s disease will develop in the the brain. We want to bring modern for international cooperation, that usually take? sults to the engineer. He says ‘‘Yes, that’s future to be able to carry out effective methods of data analysis to this proj- helps to unlock the mysteries Depending on the complexity of the great but it’s not what we need.” Then treatment and prevent the emergence ect but so far this idea is only at the and capabilities of the human project, it typically takes about one or we have to return to the discussion of the of unwanted symptoms (a very clear launch stage. This process is not easy brain. I am pleased that two months. A lot of this time is spent problem and start again. example of such symptoms is suicidal and it is not fast because more than Skoltech is our strategic part- not on solving the problem but rather on tendencies in people with Huntington’s 100 centers around the world are par- ner and coordinates over 10 deciding how to formulate it. All of our In 2015, you headed the data analysis disease). Knowing the patient’s medical ticipating in the project. The project centers in Russia and the CIS work with Formula 1, Airbus and other sector in neuroscience at the Insti- history, our task is to predict the devel- leaders from the University of South- under this project.” companies can be divided into two parts. tution for Information Transmission opment of the disease in the future. The ern California are now doing a lot of

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organizational work so that they can cluding communications with doctors their research. This course is for stu- Using standard technology, it is use the latest achievements to ana- and releatives. A special headset reads dents of different specializations, for necessary to make a series of ten pho- lyze the colossal data samples that the patient’s neurophysical indices and biologists, for example. The idea of tographs using special equipment. It have been collected so far. transforms his thoughts into text typed this course is to abandon the lecture is not possible to take ten photographs The CoBrain project is currently on a keyboard. As a result, an immo- format and focus on practical tasks in during one experiment because the being developed at Skoltech and this bilized person can type a text without the format of a seminar. The tasks are cloud scatters too quickly. We had to project is supported within the frame- any effort, using only his mind; the en- something like this: here is the data conduct ten experiments – in the first, work of the National Technical Initi- tire alphabet appears on a screen, the and you need to do this with it. We do we took a photograph at the start, in tative. The task of CoBrain is to create person concentrates on looking at each not give them anything other than the the second, with a slight delay after an infrasturcture for the collection letter and thus prints the text. To make data. Students need to figure out how the start and so on. The experiment and analysis of data on the structure sure that everything works correctly, it they will handle this and write their took a long time as it was necessary and functioning of the brain. We have is necessary to conduct many experi- own program for processing. As a final to set up and run the entire system big plans for cooperation with lead- ments and to teach the machine to cor- project, we give them a real challenge ten times. ing Russian medical centers. After all, machine learning. It is necessary to de- was tried for Twitter, so that a para- rectly recognize signals from the brain. from the business or science spheres or The idea of the project was: is it we are unable to formulate for our- velop methods of analysis from this data lyzed person could write by character. The person is shown letters, the activity we ask them to do a project that is con- possible to achieve a result if only two selves clinical tasks that can be useful in particular so that in the future, this But it ended up taking half an hour to of the brain is monitored and the data is nected with their research, using what photographs are taken instead of ten, to society, so it is important for us to infrastructure will become a place for compose a single tweet using this meth- collected in a catalog. they have learned. and then use machine learning meth- find partners who can help with this. scientific medical research and the birth- od. Speed is the main limiting factor. ods? It turned out that it is possible. By Constant contact is needed between place of new ideas and start-ups. Our research, therefore, is not aimed Do you have time to teach? Could you tell us about a project by the end, Emil had received high-qual- professors, researchers and doctors at creating such methods; they already I teach at Skoltech and at the Moscow one of your students? ity predictions of the results for the who communicate with patients ev- You are now working on creating exist. Rather it is aimed at accelerating Institute of Physics and Technology, I Emil Davletov, a Master’s student at whole experiment. ery day. We need radiology special- a “brain machine” neurointerface. and developing this technology. teach a course called “Introduction to Skoltech, is studying ultra-low tem- We can carry out an experiment ists who have a deep understanding In the future, a person will be able Within the National Technical Intia- Machine Learning and Data Analysis” peratures. During an experiment, a five times faster, evaluate what hap- of the MRI process. to control various technical devices tive, there is a project by Alexander Ka- with my colleagues. We ran an applied special arrangement compresses a pened and in the case of interesting We need to build an infrastructure using the power of thought? plan. This project is devoted to the de- course at Skoltech. We try to teach the cloud of atoms and it is necessary to results, carry out a full experiment that will help us to process data about In fact, this technology has been around velopment of a more convenient system students how to work with data so that observe how quickly this compressed to get reliable figures. I am pleased the brain from MRI and EEG scans, for for 15 years but it has a significant lim- for paralyzed people to interact with they can acquire practical skills in con- cloud begins to expand. The faster it that students have begun to apply the example, by using modern methods of itation – it is very slow. Such a system the world through a neurointerface, in- structing models and can use them in expands, the higher its temperature. knowledge that we gave them.

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A research scientist from the tion at a crossroads between subject scratch. I was his first researcher. At Skoltech Center for Data-Intensive areas. Then I did further postgraduate the time, we weren’t working in these Humans are eternal Biomedicine and Biotechnology study at MSU and went on to defend buildings, but in the Hypercube. On children. The human talks about how lipid research my thesis at the Institute for Infor- my first day of work, I arrived at the helps unravel the mysteries of the mation Transmission Problems of the Hypercube in a Kamaz truck because brain works the way human intellect. Russian Academy of Sciences (IITP this was a construction site. Now an a primate’s would RAS). My postgraduate thesis was entire campus has sprung up, but back ould you mind supervised by Mikhail Gelfand, who then there was just a field and the Hy- work in the womb sharing how your is a professor at Skoltech as well as percube building. That was in 2014. for quite some time scientific journey at the bioengineering and bioinfor- began? matics faculties at MSU, and deputy What are you working on now? I was always interest- director of IITP RAS. At some point, Our lab is studying the evolution of ed in both biology and math. Around Professor Gelfand became friends the human brain. We examine how when the time came for me to go to with now-Skoltech Professor Philipp the brain works at various levels – college, a new faculty of bioengineer- Khaitovich, who later became my su- in particular, on the molecular lev- ing and bioinformatics was created pervisor. They started a collaboration, el: Which mechanisms work in the at Moscow State University (MSU). and another colleague, Pavel Mazin, brain? How have they changed? And Studying there was interesting: we and I went to China. Professor Khai- why have we become so smart com- had professors from the biology and tovich was working in Shanghai back pared to monkeys? Secondarily, we the mechanics and mathematics facul- then, heading the neuroscience lab focus on the study of development ties. It worked out as a double educa- at the Max Planck Partner Institute and aging: we look for changes that for Computational Biology. I spent a happen in the human brain during year in China, and when I returned development from infancy to old age, to Russia, Skoltech had just formed. and we compare the same correla- Professor Khaitovich was invited to be tions in primates like chimpanzees Ekaterina Khrameeva: a professor here, and he began to re- and macaques. Though it may seem cruit researchers. He created the same like humans are not all that differ- // It would be exciting to find a set of molecules to help us think better// laboratory as the one in China from ent from primates, on the molecular

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There are genetic level our developmental mechanisms have the idea of measuring the lipid Are there any ideas for future course of treatment. We’ve thought versity (Justus Liebig Universität are built completely differently. Hu- composition of human and primate projects? about startups and practical appli- Gießen) in splicing research. It’s markers for cancer, mans are eternal children. That is, if brains of different ages and in differ- A very promising project is coming cations. First, we’ll do the research, an important stage of biosynthe- but that kind of monkey infants are born developed ent areas of the brain, comparing it up with the Burdenko Neurosurgery which will help us understand which sis that is responsible for protein and can look after themselves, the hu- all and attempting to establish a link Institute in Moscow. They carry out lipids are common in which tumors. diversity in various tissues. I also research is lengthy man brain works the way a primate’s between cognitive abilities and differ- brain tumor removal surgeries. It’s Then, knowing this set of lipids and worked at MIT, in Professor Leonid would work in the womb for quite ences in lipid composition. impossible to cut out just the tumor; tumor markers, we can quickly do Mirny’s lab. Together we studied and expensive, some time. For this reason, all neu- a certain amount of healthy tissue an analysis during surgery and use the three-dimensional structure of whereas we could ral processes function for a while just What is the ultimate aim of this study? also gets caught, and these sam- these markers to establish the type core chromatin: I created a com- as actively as in the first year of life. Well, for instance, one can imagine ples are saved. There are samples of and stage of the tumor, and the doc- puter model of the way a two-me- suggest a new. Later, with age, it becomes more dif- that in a hundred years we’ll find different types of tumors, different tor can prescribe a therapy accord- ter DNA molecule is placed and cheaper form ficult for us to master new material. some lipid that will make us smart- stages, both early and progressive. ingly. It’s a very affordable method. works in each cell. There’s a physiological reason for it, er. In fact, it’s unlikely that it will We are planning to study the lipid There are genetic markers, but that of diagnostics and it’s not that we’re lazy or don’t be a single component but, chances composition of tumors and the sur- kind of research is lengthy and ex- Do you plan on staying at Skoltech, want to study. In childhood, the brain are, a set of molecules. It would be rounding tissue in order to under- pensive, whereas we could suggest or do you have other offers? is built in such a way that it easily exciting to find a set that would help stand how they differ. This kind of a new, cheaper form of diagnostics. I like working here; I don’t want to retains new information. This period us think better. search has never been done at the At Burdenko we have been assured go anywhere else. I’ve been working is very short for primates, while for level of lipids, only at the genetic that up to 1,000 samples will be col- at Skoltech for three years now and humans it’s prolonged. Humans learn Who is going to participate in the level. The mutations that occur in lected over the year. We hope that they’ve just extended my contract, so for longer; maybe that’s the reason project? tumor tissue were compared with in half a year’s time, we’ll already I’ll stay on for another year at least. we’re so smart. We recently got a All of Professor Khaitovich’s group. healthy tissue. I think it would be a have preliminary results. Several I could, of course, look for work in new mass spectrometer at Skoltech. We have five higher postgraduate very interesting addition to the over- hundred samples will be sufficient the West. For example, I participate It makes it possible to measure me- students, and at least two will be all picture, as this could be associat- to do pilot studies. in collaborations with Germany, so I tabolite and lipid levels in the brain. involved in the project. I’ll probably ed with existing data at the genetic could go there. But my work is com- Nerve cell membranes are made up of be the leading researcher. There are level. Also, this will provide the op- Which projects did you work on be- puting; I work at a computer, so my lipids. The speed and quality of nerve other researchers; we usually work portunity to precisely differentiate fore Skoltech? trip won’t be all that helpful for the impulse transmission depends on the with as a group, it’s never one person types of tumors. This is important to During further postgraduate study, project’s development. So I only go composition of lipid membranes. We per project. consider for purposes of choosing a we collaborated with Giessen Uni- for short visits.

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Skoltech PhD student and drone Tsykunov, his partner Mikhail Matrosov, We have several sub-groups, and in each Our most recent project was LightAir, wiz Evgeny Tsykunov contemplates and a team of developers with their fin- one, there are people working on their which was created by Skoltech professor the future or unmanned aerial ve- gers on the pulse have taken their tech- own fields. For example, one student is Dzmitry Tsetserukou. This project is in- hicles, and what businesses stand nology on the road, gaining recognition working on a project aimed at develop- teresting in that it allows an ordinary user to gain from this rapidly evolving by their peers at prestigious internation- ing a triple-axis manipulator for a drone without special knowledge or additional technology. al exhibitions. in order to enable users to access diffi- devices like a smartphone or a console, to During the first trip abroad, to the cult-to-reach places. To achieve this, use and communicate with a drone. he Skoltech Intelligent Space SIGGRAPH computer graphics and in- the student attaches a robot hand to the To achieve this, we created a display Robotics Lab is reimagining teractive technologies conference, the drone. This is incredibly innovative; there that appears on the ground via a projec- human-drone interaction. project was categorized as a promis- are only a few similar projects in develop- tion. This can work on any hard surface. Gone are the days where ing emerging technology and exhibited ment around the world. The student and We use a 3D scanner attached to the one would have to rely on alongside the projects of top universi- his team started with small, light drones. drone to make the display interactive. a joystick and similar electronic advices ties and companies. LightAir went on to The hand, or rather the component, was The user can then issue commands with to control an unmanned aerial vehicle. secure the Laval Virtual Award. printed on a 3D printer. A drone like that his or her feet, by tapping on the image Now, we can control them with the help We caught up with Tsykunov to learn is very mobile. It can fly, grab something, of the desired outcome. Generally speak- of gestures, or even the tap of a foot. more about his bright young career. pick something up and move around. We ing, interactive projections are currently Skoltech PhD student Evgeny Tsykun- are actively working with various part- in very high demand, so this project has ov has already made waves in this field What attracted you to drone tech? ners, including the logistics industry. attracted a great deal of attention from of emerging technology with the project I was lured in by the prospect of doing They would be interested in transferring companies from a range of industries. LightAir, which strives to make drone something new while using limited re- certain objects inside warehouses – from technology accessible to non-specialists. sources. About 80 percent of our work storage shelves to transportation – and How can this sort of technology is related to software development. We then on to other premises. For example, be used? take ready-made flying platforms and a box with a smartphone inside could fly In a variety of different ways. We have develop software for them, that can be from the warehouse shelf to the store, or created six specific applications. There Evgeny Tsykunov: useful in various industries. immediately to the client. are useful applications, like using a drone to project a map and relevant details on // A box with a smartphone inside could fly from the warehouse shelf directly What exactly does the group working Which of your projects are you most the ground as the user walks down the to a customer’s home// on unmanned aerial vehicles do? proud of? street. There are fun applications, like

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using the floor projection to play - agi project? Surely it must be easier for easier. If a user orders a pizza, for exam- Accumulators are another unsolved carrying capacity and flight time, it is What else can drones be used for, ant piano or a game of virtual football. users to issue commands with their ple, he or she may not want to pay in problem. Drones can only fly auton- quite difficult for one drone to perform from a practical point of view? You could even use it to order lunch. The hands, right? advance. Once the delivery arrives, the omously for a short period of time. such complex tasks. Part of our group is now working on cre- drone can project the menu of your favor- When it comes to issuing simple com- drone can project the payment data onto Is the Intelligent Space Robotics lab To reduce this burden on one drone, I ating a drone that will count inventory. ite restaurant, then you select what you mands like “stop” or “follow me” or “take the floor, making it easy for the user to working on this issue? allocated these tasks to two drones. One Warehouses are required to carry out want, and then the drone transmits your a selfie,” it’s probably easier for a user enter his card information once the pizza Not directly, but at the Skoltech Cen- of them flies around the territory, checks regular inventory counts for accounting payment information and then collects to gesture with their hands. But if we’re has arrived. ter for Electrochemical Energy Storage, for dangerous obstacles and finds the purposes and to keep track of where and delivers your food. We’ve also come talking about human-drone interac- professors and students are working on parcel’s destination. The second drone everything is. This process consumes up with a specific application where us- tions, and about the transfer of graphic Are you working on making it eas- similar issues. And we are testing their simply carries the cargo on board and a great deal of man power, and often ers can take selfies with their feet. information, hand gestures alone are ier for people to fly drones without developments. safely delivers it to the desired location, proves costly and inefficient for com- not sufficient. Furthermore, the use of crashing them? the coordinates of which are obtained panies. Drones can do this work auton- What is unique about the project? feet instead of hands gives us a bit of an We are working on this issue in the Ligh- Are there any other interesting of-the- from the first drone. omously. They can fly, read and record We wrote the software for gesture rec- edge; no one else is doing this. Plus, us- tAir project. The drone has four degrees moment drone developments you’d We carried out all of these experi- the necessary data. Operators of large ognition. The concept itself is quite new; ing one’s feet to control a drone with the of movement: up-down, right-left, for- like to share? ments outdoors, using GPS. We recently warehouses are eager for automated while many interactive projections already help of the image on the floor is some- ward-backward, and U-turn. Further- Personally, I am very interested in created a system of motion capture and solutions. We work closely with them to existed by the time we entered the scene, times more convenient and logical. more, there are varying levels of drone swarms of drones. This is the subject it very accurately tracks the movement make sure we’re meeting industry needs none of them involved a drone. In March, control. Joysticks allow users to control of my dissertation. I did several relat- of the object. With its help and within developing this technology. we were at the Laval Virtual computer The scenarios that you mentioned all degrees of movement simultaneously, ed academic projects while earning out GPS, you can see exactly where the graphics forum in France. There, we col- are possible without the use of but they are really complicated, especial- my MSc. Those projects were related drone is and accordingly, monitor its When will this project reach the com- lected feedback that we will use to finalize drones; maps can already be saved ly for a beginner. There’s also the option to a search for the most optimal dis- position and orientation. Drone data is mercial stage? the project. For us, it’s imperative that us- on a smartphone, as can games on a of high-level management, where you can tribution of functions between several transmitted over a 2.4 GHz radio fre- We expect to test the first commercial ers feel comfortable interacting with their console. Why are drones necessary just say to the drone “fly away from me,” drones. For example, say you need to quency. We also had the opportunity to versions of these drones in warehous- drones. Toward this end, we plan to con- in this regard? “fly to me” or “fly north” and it follows your deliver cargo. It turns out that in addi- experiment with drones inside of build- es in about six months. Along with the duct a study to determine which control A drone has many advantages, particu- command. With the LightAir project, we’re tion to the fact that the drone is carry- ings. Toward this end, we’re working on drones themselves, we’ll provide our test gestures come most naturally to users. larly when it comes to convenience. It working on simplifying the command and ing the cargo, it must also use on-board developing interactions between indi- subjects with software for integration can carry additional cargo on board, and control process with gestures. For exam- sensors and a computer to understand vidual persons and groups of palm-sized with their warehouse management sys- Why did you decide to focus on the it can free up the user’s hands while ac- ple, a triple leg “tap” to order the drone to where it is flying and where to deliv- drones. This is another very interesting tems, along with sensors, beacons, ori- use of feet instead of hands for this companying him. It also makes payments fly around a person and shoot a video. er the parcel. In conditions of limited area of study. entation markers, and charging stations.

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The vice president of aerospace The Internet of Things is a virtual reality, Which tasks could Astro Digital data I always dreamed of working on some- ideas and dreams to land on fertile soil. startup Astro Digital, who hails and its components are data, analytical plat- help solve? thing big and meaningful. Psychologists If you are around people who are busy from Skoltech’s first intake of stu- forms and infrastructure for storage, pro- A lot of them! From evaluating crop say that 96% of people dream of some- doing the right thing, everything be- dents, talks about how she was cessing and data transmission. Infrastruc- production for grain trade to urban thing at least once a day. But how many comes a lot easier. able to make satellite data acces- ture is becoming increasingly simple thanks planning and tracking illegal construc- of us turn these dreams into reality? Few. Well, and the third element, perhaps sible to a variety of businesses. in large part to Amazon, and this makes it tion, all in real time. Why does that happen? Because dreams the most important, and which can’t be possible to rapidly build a scalable system. are scary. They’re confusing: where to go forgotten, is extremely hard work. I am katerina, would you mind Data processing systems, such as neural net- Do you have any competitors? and what to do. Over the course of my often in touch with successful entrepre- telling us about your busi- works, will also become accessible. We’re certainly not the first or only company extremely brief career, I have developed neurs in both Russia and the West. They ness in a nutshell? The high-quality data needed to build to build satellites. What makes us different? a formula for chasing dreams: it consists all have one thing in common: they are Astro Digital’s work deals reliable models are the key problem. We were able to create an extremely cheap of three essential elements. workaholics. They work 20 hours a day, with the Internet of Things. And it takes a lot of data. That means satellite group. Our vehicles, about the size The first and most fundamental is if not 25. There’s no formula for success McKinsey estimates that the econom- you need many stations to gather vari- of a microwave oven, collect high-quality education. I started my academic career that doesn’t include hard work. I think ic value of the Internet of Things will ous information. Sensors can be placed scientific data that can be used for deep 12 years ago. I was 14 years old when it’s important to bear this in mind, even reach 11 trillion dollars within a de- in objects themselves–like the GPS sen- analysis. In addition, this data is received I began studying IT. I went on to earn when there are great institutions for decade. For context, Google in its current sor everyone has in their smartphone. with a high frequency: a fully deployed degrees in Economics and Management. velopment. form could make that in 150 years. John You can also use remote sensors. Astro group can cover the entire Earth daily. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be Chambers, former head of CISCO, said Digital works with remote sensors. Our We have fundamentally changed the among Skoltech’s first intake of students, What stage of development is Astro that the Internet of Things would have remote sensors are cameras on satellites business model. Satellite data is typically where, supervised by founding president Digital in now? a stronger effect on society than the In- at an altitude of 600 km, which gather sold in scenes, and the client pays for pix- Edward Crawley, I learned how to create We recently closed a round of funding ternet itself. information from Earth’s entire surface. els. We began selling a monitoring solu- innovations and commercialize dreams. and attracted more than $16 million. We tion by subscription: data as a service. We That definitely had an impact on me. launched two test vehicles and two initial simplified access to it, making a scalable, The second element that, thanks to vehicles of the main group. Plus, we have rapid platform that makes it possible for Skoltech, I was also a part of is an eco- developed a platform for data processing any application to directly embed data. system. It’s the environment where we and distribution. The full group will total Ekaterina Kotenko-Lengold: can “grow” our dreams. Institutes such 30 satellites. Astro Digital also has a sub- How is it that you are already chang- as the Skolkovo space cluster make it sidiary called ImageAiry, which I founded; // I was 14 years old when I began studying IT// ing the world at 26? possible for young, fragile, unconscious it’s a resident of the Skolkovo space cluster.

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KOMARIK A device for self-administered injections, created by Dmitry Vasiliev, allows users to automatically inject themselves with hypodermic needles, slowly administer their medication and withdraw the needle at the touch of a button. It is compat- ible with all syringes available at pharmacies, thus giving patients the freedom of independence. Requests to bring the idea to fruition came from various groups: relatives, medical staff in clinics, hospitals and the patients themselves. The meetings with these interested parties cemented the creator’s belief that the device would be in high demand. TYLER 5 Tyler is the name of a robot at the time. Skoltech helped 1that transforms digital images to gather feedback about the into mosaics. The team de- idea, develop a prototype, 2 veloped the concept behind demonstrate it to various Tyler shortly before they be- experts and present it at the gan their studies at Skoltech. Startup Village 2017. Tyler During one of our brainstorm- automates the whole process ing sessions, Andrey Sartison of mosaic-making and makes and Dmitry Ermachenkov it possible to create a 1 m2 came up with the idea of a mosaic in four hours — a robot that could create mosa- process that could otherwise ics based on a digital image. take two weeks of work. The The guys were thinking team soon plans to begin specifically about establishing working with different mosaic Bold and successful, these five startups were born and raised a hardware startup, in light studios, interior designers,

startups in Skoltech, from idea to market of the competencies they had and real estate developers.

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simple beginnings: what INTOUCH started as bracelets for InTouch is tech that long-distance couples scans your physiology transformed into a tech- to detect your emotional nology that can detect a state. Just one example broad spectrum of hu- 3 of how this technology man emotions, from joy WIСRON can be used is as an to sorrow, by scanning Wicron is a developer and robotics electronic wristband physiological realities like manufacturing company that created the fitted with special the user’s heartbeat. The Webot, a Telepresence robot. The prod- biological sensors. The co-founders, Anastasia uct is being used as part of Russia’s wearer will be able to Stelvaga and Alexander inclusive education program. The aim view statistics about his Martynov, came up with is to help people with special needs or her emotional state the idea upon returning 5EASY TEN engage remotely with the education sys- using a mobile app. By to Skoltech from Boston Easy Ten is an app created by Nikita Pestrov and Sergei Muratov tem. Specifically, a person with special monitoring emotional after a study exchange that helps users learn a foreign language in ten words a day. Its needs who is required to stay at home fluctuations, the user can program eager to try primary distinction is that it was designed for casual learners, i.e. can deploy a remote-controlled mobile seek unique solutions, something new. Skoltech anyone who wants to learn a foreign language but doesn’t want to telepresence robot to record and transmit thus leading to an im- gave them a timely and set aside a significant amount of time to do so. The idea for the app video and audio files from educational proved quality of life. vital opportunity – the came to one of the co-founders while he was studying medicine. At institutions. The idea was born after The idea behind the chance to devote time the time, he was trying to learn Czech, but he had hardly any time talking with the early stage investor Igor project evolved from to project. to study. His wife suggested learning 10 words a day. He loved the Ashmanov and reviewing the commer- idea and eventually it evolved into Easy Ten. The team currently cial prospects of the robotics market. consists of 11 people, and Easy Ten has become a bestseller among Skoltech provided the laboratory for the educational apps. It is currently available in 11 languages. The team project, where the team, Dmitry Suvorov, says that they wanted to do something like this even before entering Roman Zhukov, and Evgeny Prodaikov 4 Skoltech, but since arriving here, they have found ways to make the could test the autonomous version. This project even better. In particular, they’ve learned to properly validate is where they began to work on automat- the new ideas and develop a system for analytics and data collec- ic movements, obstacle avoidance, the tion. Now Easy Ten is moving in the direction of gamification so that detection of people, and navigation. the user will view the learning process as fun, not as hard work.

SKOLTECH 192 193 CHANGING THE WORLD German-Russian Symposium

From 11–14 September 2017, Skoltech held the 7th German-Russian Week of the Young Researcher. This year, the annual conference, organized by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), under the aegis of the German House of Research and Innovation (DWIH) in Moscow, was dedicated to computational biology and biomedicine. Aimed at strength- ening partnership and cooperation between young Russian and German researchers, it was recognized as one of the most successful such conferences in recent years.

5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ Innovation Workshop

The Innovation Workshop is a course aimed at giving students the knowledge, skills, and attitudes they will need to become successful Skoltech students and innovators. At first, students are divided into teams and tasked with coming up with a group project that they remain committed to for the course of the workshop. A key element of the course is the cooperation between the student teams and an array of invited experts who watch their presentations, provide valuable feedback and then serve as mentors, helping the students breathe life into their projects.

197 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ СТРАТЕГИЯ CONFERENCE

Shaping the Future On 25–26 April 2017, Skoltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hosted a major joint conference “Shaping the Future: Big Data, Biomedicine and Frontier Technologies.” High-profile speakers included Skoltech President Alexander Kuleshov, MIT President L. Rafael Reif, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Arkady Dvorkovich, Skolkovo Foundation President Victor Vekselberg, architect Pierre de Meuron and leading scientists and researchers from Skoltech, MIT, the University of Southern California and other universities and research centers.

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Ivan Oseledets: // Soil is a complex system in which chemical, physical and biological processes take place simultaneously//

Skoltech professor Ivan Osele- data. Skoltech Professor Ivan Oseledets dets talks about an interdisciplin- made a name for himself by finding ary approach to agriculture, the a solution in 2009, when he published trials and tribulations of analyzing a highly influential paper on tensor large data sets, and how 21st cen- trains (a sequence of mathematical de- tury farmers use mathematics compositions and computations.)

hen it comes to large Educational process and project ac- data sets covering tivities at Skoltech are sharpened by many variables, the interdisciplinarity. Tell us a bit more direct recalculation about Skoltech’s current project with of all possible com- RusAgro. binations and conditions takes months Our main goal with this project is to in- are interrelated. We are interested in and years of calculations. To record crease the fertility of soils. This process physical properties, for example, the such data, you may need a server the is influenced by many factors and all of porosity of the soil, because this affects size of Google’s, for example. Mathe- them must be taken into account. Soil a plant’s ability to retain moisture. This maticians around the world have faced is a complex system in which chemical, porosity is formed due to the activity these obstacles when searching for al- physical and biological processes take of whole communities of different mi- gorithms to compute large amounts of place simultaneously and all of them croorganisms, processing residues and

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forming the most important organic er that something has turned out to how snow melts and the supply of nu- matter of the soil — humus. Our goal be a lost crop after having spent two trients to plants. is to make an integral model suitable years analyzing it. All of these things We do not restrict ourselves to relief: for fields with a certain soil type, cli- should be foreseen and determined be- we went to the fields on two occasions mate, species of microorganism and forehand, not after. The project is not and collected more than 360 samples precipitation level. To do this, you fixed, we are free to adjust the plan, and each sample was analyzed in ten need to understand what to measure, tasks, and input new data, measure- ways. In comparison with climate data, how to do it and why. The latter is no ments, and results. field data is much smaller but highly less important because it is impossible accurate. We know exactly how much to collect all possible parameters. This Why did you start with relief as a key moisture and how many of the import- would most likely be pointless because factor? ant trace elements are in each sample. the parameters could be related to oth- This is one of the basic parameters that We do not forget that there are pro- ers, or could be the consequences of we could obtain and process relative- fessors and agronomists on our team others, or could have practically no in- ly easily. We had satellite data on the that can predict, for example, a crop fluence on the result. terrain, albeit not very accurate data, failure without any modeling. We al- We started the project fairly recent- and there was European weather data, ready discovered that in the experi- ly, and it’s meant to last for two years. which we re-analyzed. In general, all mental fields, an agricultural compa- Commercial Because I’m a mathematician, I man- that can be obtained without leaving ny used a very crude technique that age the project. We identified the fol- the office. ground the top layer of soil almost into projects often We carry out all of our laborato- on a truck and will do everything that lowing key factors for collecting data: We compensate for the inaccuracy a powder and because of this, there approach Skoltech ry studies in the Dokuchaev Soil Sci- is needed on the spot. Combined with relief, soil physics, chemistry and the of satellite data on the terrain by using are no large lumps in the soil. Water ence Institute. We are also creating the drone, it will be possible to conduct trace element composition of the soil, a special drone made by the company does not remain in such soil and the lo- to benefit an agroinformation analysis depart- mass research in a relatively short time. and biological components, including Geoscan, which is much more accurate. cal agronomist in such a situation will from our expertise, ment there. The support of the in- At the moment, it is still necessary to the diversity of communities of bacte- One drone can collect the data we need declare that there is a drought. Even stitute’s director, Andrei Ivanov, has work without a mobile laboratory. This ria, animals, fungi, and plants. We rely from a whole field in less than an hour. through these very simple actions, by as well as our proved instrumental. In the future, we is not easy and it is certainly time con- on Soviet data to assess historical fac- A field that seems smooth can easily changing the type of processing, we analytical and plan to optimize the process and every- suming to take a drill, extract samples, tors. In many ways, we do this in order have height differences of 20 meters can increase yields. We started the first thing will become much more mobile. A and then transport everything back to to avoid a situation where we discov- or more. This affects moisture flow, field season with this. processing skills mobile laboratory will arrive at the field Moscow for analysis.

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Our goal is to make should not be monitored. To work fields at Skolkovo and it achieved re- from having enough. What kinds of with such a model, it needs to be cal- cord harvests here. To this day, the cards they will be will be based on an integral model ibrated and for this, long-term field remains of the lysimetric station still the task: Tesla cards support double suitable for fields experiments are necessary. But we exists on the territory. It is usually precision. Titan is cheaper and in do not have that much time, so we said that it was the only one in the tasks that require single precision, is with a certain are preparing to create laboratory Soviet Union – at least the only one in almost no way inferior. models at the new Skoltech campus with huge gas caps. soil type, climate, which will open soon, and this will What about the funding situation? species of give us a little more data and indi- How much is spent on your studies Thanks to Skoltech’s capabilities, we rect signs. when compared to classical labora- have internal financing. This is a crit- microorganism and tory tests? ical point, especially at the beginning precipitation level Do you focus on other projects? An agroproject can last indefinite- of the project. We have some grants There is a project at the Massachu- ly and you can invest any amount, from Russian scientific funds, and be- setts Institute of Technology (MIT) but we are trying to do multifaceted fore that, I had received a grant from that I really like. It’s called MIT work on a limited budget. We are a the Education and Science Ministry of Open Agriculture. It’s extremely sim- far cry from the costs of biologists. Russia. There are also external sourc- What will you do with all of this data? ple: a camera is placed somewhere, As they say about biologists: “When es of financing. For example, we an- The biological data will be consid- a plant is planted there, along with in doubt, buy yourself a sequencer.” alyze data for commercial projects, ered in its simplest form, as a set sensors, and extremely informative We, like them, spend a lot of time which often approach Skoltech to of variables of different types. We data is obtained. and energy on laboratory and field benefit from our expertise, as well as will rework all of this into equations We are planning to order a lysim- equipment. The drone already men- our analytical and processing skills. and a laboratory model so that we eter in Germany. This is a laboratory tioned for the collection of relief data They always find whatever they were can answer further questions: what set up. A soil monolith can be loaded costs almost 1.5 million rubles. Data looking for. And even taking into ac- will happen if we add more fertiliz- into it and it is possible to analyze the analysis requires computers with count the fact that Skoltech is not the ers, change the precipitation regime, processes occurring within it. Skolko- powerful graphics cards, the more, cheapest option when compared to and so on. This is a very rough and vo is no stranger to the lysimeter. The the better. We now have 14 graphics typical Russian academic institutes, unclear model but it will give us an Nemchinovka agricultural research cards, we will soon have at least six companies still believe we offer the idea of which parameters should and institute once had its experimental more. Still, we’re a long way away best value for money.

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What do you do at Skoltech? Our Center creates materials for electrochemical energy storage. My field of expertise is metal-ion batteries. Do you use metal-ion batteries?

Yes, in my phone… That’s right, but now we want to move Artem Abakumov, a professor of on from using metal-ion batteries solely the Center for Electrochemical in handheld devices to powering elec- Energy Storage, tells us about tric cars with them: we want to switch our battery-powered future. from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Cars need a much more pow- hat is your area of erful battery with properties that go scientific expertise? beyond the existing technologies. To Inorganic chemistry compete with the internal combustion – materials chemis- engine, we need a battery that can pow- try, solid state chem- er a car for at least 600 miles. What’s istry – crystallography and transmis- more, the battery can’t take up all the sion electron microscopy. I can draw free space inside the car or weigh and up a design of a material using knowl- cost the same as the car itself. The pro- edge of its crystal structure, electron cess of creating the right batteries starts structure, and chemical principles. And with the study of materials. not just draw up a design; I can also The same is true for electricity stor- find ways to synthesize the material, age systems in power supply networks. Artem Abakumov: and investigate its properties and crys- You need more than just batteries; you tal structure. Specialists in this line of need large, reasonably-priced batter- // The electric vehicle market will be worth 4.5 trillion dollars by 2030// work are rare the world over. ies with long lifespans. Otherwise, the

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Our main objective energy industry won’t use them. Elec- charging stations at the start and end ducing the “heart” of these batteries; down to the atomic level. This means they taxi from the airport to the run- tric transport and electric power are of routes is much easier than building i.e., the cells. Without these materials, we can make informed choices. You way. Diesel is not a viable option: you for the next 5-10 the two main driving forces behind the a nationwide network of charging sta- we will not be able to produce batter- can work by trial and error or you can need an electric motor. Lithium batter- technology. Projects like this cannot tions for personal transport vehicles. ies ourselves and will always have to work using the principles of how mate- ies that may potentially explode mid- years is to launch be fully implemented in isolation: they rely on imports. This is unacceptable: it rials work and what you need to do to flight will never be a popular choice. the production are the combined objective of in-depth Tell us more about the specific objec- means we will depend on foreign man- create viable ones. They had to shelve a similar project in cooperation between different organi- tives of the Center for Electrochemical ufacturers to develop electric transport. the Boeing Dreamliner because there of materials for zations and various specialists across a Energy Storage. We are setting up our own startup Tell us how the areas of application was a problem with lithium-ion batter- batteries in Russia wide range of disciplines. Our objectives can be broken down into to mass-produce electronic materials. I define your specific objectives. ies. You can sacrifice some power ca- purely fundamental ones – understand- think we’ll be able to supply the mar- For example, hybrid cars need a bat- pacity in the hope of guaranteeing the Do you have a lot of competitors? ing how complex electrochemical sys- ket with small quantities, about sever- tery that quickly charges and then dis- battery is not pushed beyond its limits. We do, just like in any other field of tems based on the reversible intercala- al hundred kilograms, of cutting-edge charges energy when powering accel- Another challenge is developing a science that is inspiring global changes tion of metals work, for example. There cathode materials in the next 2-3 years. eration, pulling away from standstill, battery that will work in the Arctic re- in the market and attracting significant are tons of questions about the nature We plan to cooperate with other com- recapturing energy from the wheels gions: a key advancement for Russia. All funding. The Electric Vehicle Market is of chemical compounds, the nature of panies that assemble cells based on new and braking. drivers know that at –30°C, battery ca- expected to be worth USD 4.5 trillion cation diffusion in a solid, and how materials. We have also planned how Overall energy density is crucial in pacity drops drastically. by 2030. It is obvious there will be a lot electron structure affects the properties exactly we will cooperate and conduct electric vehicles. This means that cars We need materials that function at of competition. of these compounds. They are all fasci- tests, etc. We submitted our project to alone need two distinct types of ma- low temperatures. This brings us back nating fundamental questions but they the Skolkovo Foundation and got posi- terial: one with a high specific ener- to the fundamental questions: How does How feasible is the use of this kind of also have practical applications: they tive feedback. Our startup, Russtore, is gy density, and the other with a high diffusion occur in a solid? How does technology in Russia? help us understand which materials going to be a Skolkovo resident. charge-discharge rate. temperature affect diffusion? Is it possi- In Russia, energy resources and ecology have real potential and which, perhaps, Safety is paramount in certain types ble to create a material that will function are not such hot button issues as they will never work at all. What is the difference between your of transport. Imagine a scenario where at low temperatures? are in the West, but there are niche Our main objective for the next 5-10 projects and those undertaken by the use of aircraft engines when taxiing Life creates myriad challenges; the markets. There are a lot of vehicles years is to launch the production of ma- competitors in the West or Asia? at airports is banned because of noise smallest details of application are vi- with a limited mileage range, for exam- terials for batteries in Russia. There are We are one of the few groups world- pollution – this will happen sooner or tal. We need to find a solution to every ple, in public transport. Kitting them companies working on designing bat- wide that creates materials with a real later anyway. Airplanes will need an problem. We’re working as hard as we out with electric motors and installing teries in Russia but no one is mass-pro- understanding of how they work, right energy source that can power them as can to do so.

SKOLTECH 210 211 CHANGING THE WORLD ARTIFACT SESSION Through the prism of a romanesco

KIRILL IGNASI ABROSIMOV LLUCH I CRUZ PhD student, Skoltech PhD, Skoltech Space Center Center for Energy Systems This artifact is a radio that can This Romanesco broccoli rep- change its parameters. This is a resents our knowledge of new good example of the technologies trends in energy systems. New that will soon appear in space. At technologies will drastically our lab, we make complex engi- The Skoltech affect the structure of power neering systems. Everything starts artifact session is systems. A hierarchical tree with a small device like this, and structure is giving way to more goes to large satellites, which are an event where complex and intricate structures, very expensive, so you have to be Skoltech scientists where every local consumer sure that nothing will break. Our generates and stores energy next step is systems collaboration, talk about their at the same time. This system connecting large and small satel- research using reminds us of a fractal — a lites, so that systems can share symbolic objects. self-similar structure. Examples their power and carry out more of that structure in nature are missions. Creativity is snowflakes, clouds… and the welcome! Romanesco broccoli.

SKOLTECH 212 213 CHANGING THE WORLD ARTYOM PAVLOV PhD student, Skoltech Space Center This robot was created by our students to participate in the Eurobot competition. It might not look like much, but PHILIPP it embodies all the paradigms used in “grown-up” robot- KHAITOVICH ics: a wheelbase model, a high-level computing module Professor, Skoltech android, distance sensors, infrared and ultrasonic sen- Center for Data-Intensive sors, a laser scanner, an odometry sensor. It’s important Biomedicine and that students realize through practice what robot devel- Biotechnology opment is, and are then ready to use their ideas and I’ve brought a samovar, as train- skills to develop them into a commercial product. ing is also communication, which is a very important part of the IVAN OSELEDETS scientific process. It often hap- Associate Professor, Skoltech Center for pens in bioinformatics that stu- Computational and Data-Intensive Science dents, along with professors and and Engineering staff members, love sitting at their My artifacts include a shovel and chernozem [black soil], computers for hours and avoiding which was brought back from Skoltech’s first joint expedition direct communication. But we all with the Russian Academy of Sciences͛ Institute of Soil Science. In the field, the shovel is our main experimental know that the best ideas are born device. Our scientific group is interested in agriculture. It’s in discussion. That’s why it’s very our future, but high technology and innovations are not important to conduct seminars, used in it. You can comprehend the essence of fertility. To socialize, and travel to confer- do that, you have to take a shovel, dig, and study. Soil is a ences. Likewise, in order to tear complex, heavy stochastic system, and no one knows how people away from their comput- to obtain our domestic chernozem, or how to restore fertility. ers, we use various tricks, the We’ve taken samples, we’ll draw up recommendations and samovar included. receive our first findings in spring 2018.

SKOLTECH 214 CHANGING THE WORLD #PEOPLECREATE #STARTUPS #RESEARCH #FORUMS #SCIENCEDRIVENBUSINESS #INNOVATIONS #NEWMATERIALS #COLLABORATIONS create people

SKOLTECH 216 #4 217 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ 218 CLOSE UP GEORGII BASYKIN 232 CLOSE UP ALBERT NASIBULIN Evolutionary Genetics Nanomaterials

222 CLOSE UP NATALIA BERLOFF 234 CLOSE UP ANDREY OSIPTSOV Mathematics, Quantum Materials Oil Recovery

224 CLOSE UP MAËL BROSSARD 236 CLOSE UP KONSTANTIN SEVERINOV Photonics Biology, Evolutionary Genetics

226 CLOSE UP ALESSANDRO GOLKAR Space Research 240 CLOSE UP STANISLAV SMIRNOV Mathematics 228 CLOSE UP DMITRY KOROTEEV Oil Recovery, Big Data 244 CLOSE UP KEITH STEVENSON Molecular Chemistry

230 CLOSE UP EDWARD CRAWLEY Aeronautics, Astronautics 246 BOOK MATHEMATICAL WALKS CLOSE UP

Georgii Bazykin AREA: EVOLUTIONARY GENETICS

POSITION: ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

DEGREE: PHD IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR DATA-INTENSIVE BIOMEDICINE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

#biggenetics Legendary geneticist Theodosius Dob- ing genome sequences, it is difficult to identify any traces of zhansky famously said: “Nothing in biology makes sense ex- it. We are looking for ways to find them. cept in the light of evolution.” I am in complete agreement. It’s absolutely true. Geneticists have learned to understand #armsrace The evolutionary genomics of pathogens – the mechanisms of a lot of specific things but we are only viruses, bacteria, fungi – is an arms race: the human body just starting to explore general patterns using cumulative evolves, pathogens evolve in response, and they evolve fast- data: What can life be? What can it not be? How did it turn er than us. This is especially true for RNA-viruses, such as out the way it is? One of our areas of focus is evolutionary influenza and HIV. I’m particularly interested in the predict- genomics. We are trying to understand how important a role ability of virus evolution. This knowledge allows us to devel- Darwinian selection plays. In school we’re taught that evolu- op vaccines. In the six months it takes to produce a vaccine, tion took place through natural selection, but when compar- we try to guess which strain of influenza will be next. If we

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guess correctly – the vaccine will be effective; if we miss the #population Most statistical analyses require tens of familiar with some of these mutations: for example, if one monia, Ebola, or something else entirely. Therefore, we mark – it’ll be ineffective. thousands of samples from tens of thousands of patients. of the chromosomes is removed or an extra copy is added to need to be prepared to understand what happens in terms In medicine, a lot is linked to natural selection; it’s the No laboratory in the world can sequence that many sam- any chromosome, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the of days and weeks. When swine flu hit in 2009, data on the same with pathogens. As soon as we start to tackle some- ples alone: it is always undertaken as part of an inter- pregnancy will not be successful. It transpires that a lot of first influenza sample was published in Nature incredibly thing – a bacterium with antibiotics, a virus with antiviral national collaboration. There are large databases that we miscarriages happen in this way. However, it has yet to be quickly: just a few weeks after it was catalogued. It turns drugs or even insects with insecticides – we then play a role have access to. However, occasionally we research inter- studied what was wrong with the genes of those miscarriag- out that we can learn a lot about an epidemic by simply in selecting out the most resistant specimens to these drugs esting cases independently. For example, right now we es, which were karyotypically normal with a normal set of reading the genomes. This is a wonderful example of when and insecticides. The laws of nature start working against are collaborating with a Spanish group to study the ef- chromosomes. We want to sequence about a hundred moth- theoretical ideas become both applied and absolutely vital us. We have all heard about resistance to antibiotics: it has fect of germline mutation accumulation in those with a er-father-unborn-child samples and understand what kind in learning how to rapidly respond to an epidemic. Thus, progressed to such an extent that there is talk of whether damaged protein, which increases the rate of mutations of genetic architecture can lead to such a radical phenotype. we now have a much better understanding of how epidem- antibiotics will still be viable in 10 years. It’s a scary pros- in cancer. We know that these people quickly accumulate This will also make it possible for us to understand what part ics materialize than we did 10 years ago. pect to think we could revert back to the days when you somatic mutations, but can nevertheless live until puberty of the genome plays a key role in the mutation being incom- could die from a small cut. and have children. Their children will apparently bear nu- patible with life. In the future, it’s possible that these studies #development I started out as an ecologist but merous mutations transferred from their parents. Usually, will improve prenatal diagnostics, an area undergoing rapid quickly realized that in science it’s important to pursue #copypaste As each cell divides, a “text” of three and a each parent passes on several dozen mutations to their development. studies in areas that are current and at the leading-edge, half billion letters – our genotype – is copied, reprinted and a child. Perhaps, these children will have hundreds of muta- not just what you love. 50 years ago, ecology and evolution duplicate text is passed onto the daughter cell. As a rule, there tions. If enough data is available, we will be able to study #virus The viruses that frighten us the most are actually were equally important. We had mathematical ecological are no errors, or detectable errors. If a typist copying a text of these children and “see” what a person will look like in the viruses that we know most about. The more we know models that demonstrated how species should interact with three and a half billion letters never made a typo, we would several decades or centuries. Does it mean that as years about something, the easier it to study it in greater detail. each other. Then there was a breakthrough in evolution – be amazed. Our body has this ability and we now know how: go by we will increasingly suffer from headaches or will In this sense, HIV and influenza are model subjects. We huge amounts of data appeared that you could use to check there are several biochemical mechanisms that track replica- the color of our faces be different? This project makes it have immense amounts of data on their sequencing. A par- any theory. This did not happen in ecology studies so we tion accuracy. If you break down the components of the mech- possible to peer into the future. ticularly important area of focus for Russia and the world don’t have a method of testing how the billions of organ- anism, accuracy drops by a factor of ten, a hundred or even at large is quickly understanding how epidemics work. We isms interact with each other. When this develops, ecology a thousand. Cells will still divide and reproduce but they will #tobeornottobe Medical genetics studies the mu- don’t know the factors behind large-scale epidemics that will regain its importance alongside evolutionary biology. be more likely to become a cancerous tumor. Analyzing the tations people were born with and thus already had when can take numerous lives. The only thing we can be sure of When I started out, it soon became clear that all the action data involved, it’s possible to understand which breakdowns seeing a doctor. We have launched a project on sequencing is that a large-scale epidemic will happen simply because was elsewhere so I switched to evolutionary biology and of which biochemical mechanisms can lead to such mutations the genetic factors behind miscarriages; we will investigate epidemics happen all the time and occur with increasing have been studying it ever since. I don’t regret a thing. It’s and thus perhaps discover how to prevent them. the radical mutations that cause a pregnancy to fail. We are speed. We just don’t know whether it’ll be atypical pneu- incredibly interesting!

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#quantumhydrodynamics Quantum hydro indium, and aluminum. The electrons in these layers absorb dynamics is an area of science that studies fluids and states and emit light of a specific colour. Polaritons are ten thousand where classical hydrodynamics meets quantum mechanics. times lighter than electrons and may achieve sufficient It happens in disparate systems: in liquid helium and densities to form a new state of matter known as a Bose- cold atoms, in semiconductors and magnetic systems, in Einstein condensate, where the quantum phases of polaritons equilibrium and systems out of thermodynamical equilibrium. synchronize and create a single macroscopic quantum In my research I am trying to understand and exploit the object that can be detected through photoluminescence appearance of coherence in such quantum systems. measurements and point to where the optimal solution is.

#quantumsimulator We are currently working #background In 2006, a joint article by scientists from on creating a polariton simulator – an analogue simulator Grenoble, Lausanne, Boston, Cambridge, and Oxford was capable of solving a special class of optimization problems published in Nature magazine. This study was the first to that underlie many technological, biological and social demonstrate the Bose-Einstein condensation of polaritons. problems, but that cannot be solved by a classic computer. The article was the dawn of a new era in the study of the Modern supercomputers can only deal with a small subset interaction of light and matter. Polariton condensation in of such problems when the dimension of the function to be semiconductor microcavities creates coherent quantum minimised is small or when the underlying structure of the states with surprising properties, in which quantum effects problem allows it to find the optimal solution quickly even manifest themselves at macroscopic distances. In 2015, in Natalia Berloff for a function of large dimensionality. Even a hypothetical their article published in Science magazine Toby Cubitt and quantum computer, if realized, offers at best the quadratic Gemma De Las Cuevas proved that there are universal spin AREA: MATHEMATICS, QUANTUM MATERIALS speed-up for the “brute-force” search for the global minimum. models of very simple structure, and any other optimization We tried to look at the optimization problems from a problem can be mapped into it. Surprisingly, polariton POSITION: PROFESSOR different angle. We decided to use polaritons – the particles condensates located at the nodes of an arbitrary graph DEGREE: PHD IN MATHEMATICS that appear as a result of quantum superposition of photons realize the absolute minimum of one such universal model –

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR PHOTONICS AND QUANTUM MATERIALS and electrons. Polaritons are created by shining a laser at the XY model. Therefore, a solution to the most impossible stacked layers of selected atoms such as gallium, arsenic, tasks could become a reality!

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#idea Why not take the world’s most powerful renewable #success Faced with exciting new results that didn’t energy, photosynthesis, and flip it on its head to create seem to make much sense, I spent the next few months efficient green energy sources? This was the premise of the trying to optimize the structure and racking my brain very first day of my PhD at Southampton University in 2010. I to understand how such results were even possible… I was tasked with studying Förster Resonance Energy Transfer ultimately discovered that the nanocrystalline absorbers (RET), a process that allows for efficient energy transfer at were enabling a new surface carrier recycling process! In the nanoscale. In plants, light is absorbed by a photo-absorber solar cells, blue and UV photons of high energy are absorbed such as chlorophyll. The absorbed energy is then transferred near the surface of the device, where they cannot easily onto various other molecules in a complex chain until it can contribute to the photocurrent. Using this hybrid system, be transformed into a form that the plant can use, such as I could use RET to transfer energy from the top surface of sugars. RET is a critical part of this conversion process, and the solar cell to the quantum dots, which could reemit at is as such one of the foundations of life on Earth. lower energy. These photons could then penetrate much deeper into the device, giving you useable energy! This #overcoming While my initial project was to simply breakthrough happened on 17 June 2014, a day forever mimic photosynthesis to make new types of solar cells, using marked in my mind. molecules as light absorbers and semiconductor structures as means of extracting the photo-generated energy, I slowly #bridge In 2016, I came to Skoltech on the back realized that such a process could never compete with of this saga of hope, despair, excitement and confusion existing technologies. This was a pretty tough realization, (the scientific process can be quite the emotional Maël Brossard understanding that years of hard work and many long rollercoaster!). I am now the manager of the hybrid weekends in the lab were probably not going to lead very photonics labs, which focuses on topics very close to FIELD: PHOTONICS far… But a strange cocktail of tenacity, insight and pure luck my PhD research. Being at Skoltech has given me the allowed me then to discover a completely unexpected way to freedom to advance the hybrid photovoltaics technologies POSITION: RESEARCH SCIENTIST use RET to create novel types of solar cells! While studying I pioneered and to learn new management skills while DEGREE: PHD IN QUANTUM LIGHT AND MATTER high-quality solar cells made of III-V materials, I realized working on establishing industrial applications. For me,

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR PHOTONICS AND QUANTUM MATERIALS I could strongly enhance their properties by depositing this is the perfect place to further myself and try to bridge nanocrystalline quantum dots onto their surfaces. my ideas with the real world.

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#myspace Ten days after graduating from university, I than their weight in pure gold – literally. One would imagine, left Italy to start a PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- therefore, that people would use their spacecraft at all times nology (MIT) in the United States to pursue studies in systems to amortize the costs. Not at all. Many satellites have excess engineering for human spaceflight missions and contributing capacity all the time. In other words, they are not used at to architecting studies for the NASA Constellation program. 100% of their functionality during every day of their useful Since then, I have joined the ranks of the Italian expatriates lifetimes. This represents an aggregate sunken cost of many around the world and have gained experience working in ro- hundreds of millions of rubles every year. The idea of feder- botic space exploration and space-borne Earth observation. ated satellite systems is to allow secondary users to utilize an operator’s spacecraft on demand for short periods of time, #profile I started my career at Skoltech back in 2012 as and possibly aggregate heterogeneous satellites together to one of the university’s first faculty members. As the Institute deliver the short-term services needed by an occasional user. consisted of little more than a handful of people and laptops at the time, I was sent back for a year-long faculty develop- #plans My students and I keep finding significant uses of ment program (FDP) at MIT. The FDP has been one of the this concept, as well as technological challenges to solve. We greatest experiences of my academic career so far; I was able are paving the way to enable such a concept through conceptu- to develop my academic profile, start a research portfolio, and al feasibility studies and early technology demonstrations. We create the courses that I would go on to teach in Moscow in are building the theoretical underpinning of satellite federa- the following years. tions, and developing an understanding of how such federa- tions could be used someday to serve emerging needs in high #uberforsatellites The pivotal project I started during growth fields of knowledge in the space industry. We influence Alessandro Golkar my FDP, which is still my primary line of work today, was the the space industry with our ideas through our annual Federat- idea of federated satellite systems, or in other words, satellite ed Satellite Systems Workshop, and by participating in inter- AREA: SPACE RESEARCH sharing – the “Uber for satellites,” so to speak. Spacecraft are national research consortia and externally sponsored research complex and expensive machines that are used for a variety projects. The year 2016 saw a large space system integrator POSITION: PROFESSOR of purposes – observing the Earth, enabling data, voice, and considering the implementation of federated satellite systems DEGREE: PHD IN AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS video broadcasting, and allowing us to know how much traf- in their future projects in the field of Earth Observation, as well

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH SPACE CENTER fic we will find on Kutuzovsky Prospekt on our way back from as many organizations worldwide expressing interest in the work. The cost of launching those machines is worth more subject. We have started making our dent in the space world.

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#journey When I was the director of the Department of application in the processes used by oil companies to plan New Technologies at Gazpromneft, we worked out a strat- the development of deposits. One wrote an algorithm for the egy for the technological development of the entire Gaz- automatic interpretation of well test data. Previously, this promneft exploration and production unit. Then I plunged was a time-consuming, man-power intensive process. After into the world of modern digital technology, big data and two months of practical work, he replaced a large number of the analysis of big data. I attended a refresher course at the routine operations with machine learning algorithms. A sec- Massachusetts Institute of Technology on big data and com- ond student did similar things but sped up the methods of piled a strategy for using predictive analytics and machine classical hydrodynamic modeling of reservoir currents. And learning in oil and gas production. I now work in this area at a third student developed from scratch a technique for pre- Skoltech. We are recruiting a portfolio of industrial projects dicting the effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing based on related to big data for the optimization of various technolog- data from previous work. This technique proved much more ical processes accurate than its predecessors, based on physical modeling and the experience of geologist-developers. In short, teach- #onthehorizon Our training courses are built dif- ing at Skoltech is new, interesting, wonderful! ferently than those in other oil universities. We established higher-level foundations and focus in detail on a variety of #bigdata We have teamed up with Gazpromneft to work areas. All of our courses are taught in English and almost all on four projects related to digital methods for various as- of them have been jointly developed with Western univer- pects of oil and gas production. In addition, I am working sities that are well-known in the oil industry: Heriot-Watt with Zarubezhneft, with BP, and plan to work with Total. in Edinburgh, Texas A&M, the University of Calgary, West Our colleagues from the Skoltech Center for Computation- Dmitry Koroteev Virginia University, etc. An entire branch of our educational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE), in- al program introduces the methods of progressive modeling cluding Maxim Fedorov and his team, are involved in all of AREA: OIL RECOVERY, BIG DATA and machine learning (Big Data). our projects with Gazpromneft. I believe that the future of Big Data includes the oil industry. We want to develop an IT POSITION: PROFESSOR #students I teach a course in Reservoir Simulation and platform for predictive analytics for oil and gas production DEGREE: CANDIDATE OF TECHNICAL SCIENCES Geostatistics. Several of my students have gained very suc- processes. It will be a library of algorithms that can take data

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR HYDROCARBON RECOVERY cessful work experience with Gazpromneft and BP Russia. from a certain process and create forecasts. This is a global They have done interesting work with a concrete, practical dream that we are all moving towards.

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#ISS The first time I came to Russia as an exchange stu- #neweconomy There is an opportunity in Russia to dent from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), create a new economy based on knowledge because there is I studied at Leningrad State University. I returned in 1980 a wonderful intellectual foundation. Science and education to work at the Moscow Aviation Institute. Even then, joint continue to be strong in Russia and we need to understand plans for cooperation between Russia and the United States how to reflect this in the education of students so they be- in outer space were being created. In some ways, I managed come entrepreneurial scientists, innovator scientists who to influence the development of events. In 1993, I was in- not only know science and mathematics well, but who also cluded in a commission under US President Bill Clinton that know how to transform this knowledge into products and was to determine the future of NASA and the International goods that will bring economic benefits. We must build a Space Station. I did everything in my power to unite the bridge from the scientific to the industrial sphere. I consider space station that the Americans were building with the Rus- it very important for a scientific organization to act flexibly sian program. After six months of work, a space station came and controversially, and to anticipate the needs of society. into being, which is today’s International Space Station. #interchange Mutual understanding is a consequence #thefuture I am positive about possible cooperation be- of the exchange of opinions and the movement of people in tween Russia and the United States in space. This is a step space. This is a concept that we understand at Skoltech so we into the future life of mankind beyond Earth. We can only invite scientists and students from different countries to come achieve this if all countries work together. Therefore, the here. Skoltech also sends professors and students on business main question today is whether the leaders of all nations trips to foreign universities. Security and future cooperation and countries will rise above the political tension of the mo- between countries is based on a stable economic foundation Edward Crawley ment and look into the distant future and see the opportuni- and we try to participate in the creation of this base. ty to cooperate – not compete – in outer space. AREA: AERONAUTICS, ASTRONAUTICS #worldpeace It is necessary to work diligently to MIT is an educational institution that produces stu- ensure that the world is stable and to ensure that serious POSITION: PROFESSOR, FOUNDING PRESIDENT OF THE SKOLKOVO INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY #GDP dents who have a major impact on the GDP of the United conflicts do not occur. The technological potential that we DEGREE: PHD States. The net contribution by companies that were found- harness can seriously damage the world. And all of us, espe-

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH SPACE CENTER, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ed by MIT alumni is more than $2 trillion, which is 10% of cially scientists, should influence the situation in such a way the country’s GDP. that science and education systems contribute to stability.

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#nanostructures Day after day, physicists and nucleation of supersaturated glycerin vapor in the vicinity chemists are discovering a new world by gathering struc- of the phase transition lines. tures with various traits and ranges of application from atoms and molecules, like some infinite jigsaw puzzle. These #homeland In June 2014, we moved from comfortable, 3D models consist of three fundamental carbon nanostruc- convenient and predictable Finland back to Russia. We were tures: graphene, fullerene, and a nanotube. Each of these fraught with anxiety. For my wife and I, Russia is our home- nanostructures has only been discovered in the recent past, land, but our children, though they spoke Russian well, were and all of them have quickly become the focus of intensive very different from Russian schoolchildren. For that reason, research the world over. They are at the core of our studies we decided that it would be easier to adapt to the new coun- in the Skoltech Nanomaterials Lab. With the help of these try if, in the first year, we sent the children to a Finnish materials, researchers hope to create the new world of flexi- school in Moscow. With the opening of the Skolkovo Gymna- ble, elastic, and transparent electronics of the future. sium in 2015, our children transferred there. My son faced his final examinations in two years, and, considering that his #chemistrybuff At school I took a long time to de- level of knowledge of Russian was far from the requirements cide between mathematics and chemistry, but my passion for 10th-grade students, and the level of mathematics at the for experiments won out. I was interested in just about ev- Finnish school was a year and a half to two years behind, he erything, from making gunpowder and causing cool chemi- had to work very hard to catch up with his peers. He was one cal reactions to turning metals into gold and pressing flow- of the gymnasium’s first four graduates. ers. I was able to fairly accurately reproduce the recipe for Russian Forest cologne, which was all the rage at the time. #pioneers Our nanomaterials laboratory was the first Albert Nasibulin But my desire to get into the chemistry faculty at univer- experimental laboratory that opened at Skoltech. That was sity was driven by my longing to do something useful for in August 2014. Now, the group working under my direction FIELD: NANOMATERIALS humanity, such as making a device that would make it pos- is one of the leading research laboratories in the world. This sible to obtain milk without a cow, from grass and water. is a unique environment for interdisciplinary research and POSITION: PROFESSOR, NANOMATERIALS LABORATORY DIRECTOR In 1989, I entered the chemistry faculty at Kemerovo State high-level collaboration. The primary areas of research are DEGREE: PHD IN PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY University. Over time, my childhood dreams faded away the synthesis of carbon nanomaterials and their application

DIVISION: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR PHOTONICS AND QUANTUM MATERIALS and I became interested in physical chemistry. In 1996, in transparent, flexible, and elastic electronics and photo- at age 24, I defended my PhD dissertation on the binary voltaics.

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#depths I am engaged in the improvement of hydraulic before the fracturing, the profile of the well, the geomechanical fracturing technology. When oil is extracted from a well for parameters of the rock, the fracture injection parameters, and a long time, the wellbore zone gradually becomes contami- the flow rate of the well after fracturing. My colleagues and I are nated, permeability falls and so does the oil production rate. studying the approach in which, based only on data analysis, it In other words, the flow from the well to the surface de- is possible to optimize the process and give recommendations creases. By pumping slurry into the well under high pressure on the optimal design of fracturing technology. At Skoltech we in the rock, a fracture is created and filled with something are now actively developing approaches to the combination of called a proppant. River sand was used for this previously, physical modeling and machine learning methods, in partner- now it is solid ceramic particles. As a result, highly conduc- ship with the Skoltech Big Data Center and in cooperation with tive channels are formed to transport oil or gas from the key oil and gas companies, including Gazprom Neft. depths of the formation along the fracture to the well, and then to the surface. Thus, oil recovery rates increase. #perspective The media often raises the topic of the In Russia, there was a state request for the creation of imminent decline of the oil and gas era and the rapid rise of domestic hydraulic fracturing technology which would out- alternative energy sources. Scientists working in this field are perform foreign analogues. I am engaged in the creation of more conservative than journalists. The global demand for mathematical models of hydraulic fracturing technology and energy is constantly growing. When using alternative sourc- the introduction of these models into simulators that are es of electricity, such as wind or the sun, there is a problem used for the design and planning of fracturing operations. of cyclical generation, storage and the transportation of energy without losses to places of consumption. At the same #bigdata One of the relatively new movements in oil pro- time, the volume of hydrocarbons that can potentially be Andrey Osiptsov duction is the use of methods of Big Data and machine learn- extracted, particularly from non-traditional low-permeabili- ing. If the simulator is based on a mathematical model, that is, ty reservoirs, is growing, thanks to the continuous develop- AREA: OIL RECOVERY the physical conservation laws expressed in the partial differ- ment of geographical exploration and enhanced oil recovery ential equations, than it should build a predictive model using techniques. So the rumors about the end of the hydrocar- POSITION: PROFESSOR Big Data methods on the basis of the relationship between the bons era are somewhat premature. Our task is to extract hy- DEGREE: CANDIDATE OF PHYSICAL AND MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES input and output data that characterizes the process. For ex- drocarbons – including those on Russian territory – as effi-

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR HYDROCARBON RECOVERY ample, there is an impressive set of input parameters that char- ciently and carefully as possible to preserve nature for future acterize fracturing technology: the condition of the formation generations. And the technologies that I develop help in this.

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Konstantin Severinov AREA: MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

POSITION: PROFESSOR, CREI DIRECTOR

DEGREE: DOCTOR OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, PHD

PLACE OF WORK: CENTER FOR DATA-INTENSIVE BIOMEDICINE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

#brand Russian scientists garner respect worldwide. ently and the teaching methodology in technical univer- We are known as the scientists that launched the Sput- sities changed. At Rutgers University, where I am also a nik satellite. After Sputnik took its maiden voyage into professor, there are a lot of senior professors that know space, the Americans got nervous and U.S. President a few phrases in Russian because in the early 1960s they John F. Kennedy launched a number of initiatives that voluntarily studied it at school or in university. Russian changed the curriculum at American schools and col- scientists are a brand that’s possibly even mightier than leges. Children began to study technical subjects differ- Coca Cola.

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#livelong We have never lived as long as we do now. Children from three parents – a hotly-debated con- determine the exact plague pathogen people died from an article in the journal Nature Communications on the Life expectancy started to increase in the early 20th cen- cept – is also a way to give people with certain diseases during the Black Death in the thirteenth century, figure analysis of Neanderthal genes found in modern humans. tury, mainly due to the advent of urban sanitary infra- the chance to have healthy children. Alongside the genes out which particular viral mutation claimed so many lives It was found that Neanderthal genes are more common structures: e.g. toilets and water pipes. Water purifica- that we inherited from our father and mother (which are during the Spanish pandemic at the end of the First World among the genes that facilitate the digestion of certain tion became commonplace. In general, very mundane, in our chromosomes), there are a small number of genes War, or identify the mutation responsible for Tsarevich types of food — meat, in particular. everyday reasons. Horses fell out of widespread use, in the mitochondria, a.k.a. the powerhouse of the cell as Alexei’s hemophilia. previously having been largely behind the spread of tu- they are called in Russian textbooks. None of this is technically complex; you just need sam- #incorporesano Right now, I’m really into sport. berculosis; in this sense, cars are a blessing. Finally, we The mitochondria is a former bacterium that still has ples. Soon, geneticists will set about raiding historical mu- Back in my university days, I used to think people were discovered antibiotics. a small number of “bacterial” genes. Each of us inherits seums for samples. divided into two camps – the sporty guys and the thinkers. mitochondria and the genes within it from our moth- I used to think playing sports was a sign of worthlessness. #mastersoflife On a planetary level, humans have ers. Some women have defective mitochondrial genes. #otherpeople The major contribution made by Rus- Now I understand that sports both lend structure and real- a huge impact, but in terms of overall biomass – we are Therefore, it’s certain that the children they have will sian scientists (working closely with German colleagues) ly help us think. I realized this in America where I played a drop in the ocean. There are far more bacterial cells on not be healthy. An innovative technology has been cre- was the discovery of the third branch of mankind, the so- a lot of tennis and loved skateboarding. Earth. Bacteria appeared on Earth long before us and will ated that enables us to obtain a fertilized egg that will called Denisovans, whose remains were found by Russian continue to exist when we die out. develop and grow into a child with chromosome genes scientists in the Denisova cave near Novosibirsk. #harmony The problem is that when you make choic- half of which come from the father, half from the moth- The German scientists determined the individual’s ge- es, you always cut yourself off from other opportunities. As #reproduction People want to have children. Un- er, and mitochondrial genes from a third person – a sec- nome and it turned out that it is equally distinct from both the quote says: niche specialists are like gum boil: they are fortunately, not everyone can: there are tons of diseases ond woman. the Neanderthal man and modern man. It is not a race but very one-sided. A lot of my American colleagues in science that prevent couples from having children. In the 1970s, a separate, third subspecies of the genus Homo (man), can write well-written, convincing texts about their area we saw the first “test-tube babies” conceived outside the #enigmasofhistory We also now have techno- and there was a time when all three species lived on the of study in their grant applications because they studied womb. Hundreds of thousands of people, and their chil- logical knowhow that allows us to genetically identify the planet simultaneously. English literature at university and only took up biology at dren alive today wouldn’t have been born if we had got- remains of ancient people. With unsoiled, intact, prop- Modern humans have genes from both the Denisovans the postgraduate level. As I see it, this is the right way to ten bogged down in pointless arguments about whether erly preserved bone samples, you can look into history and Neanderthals but the quantity varies from person to approach things: seeking out your profession in adulthood IVF is good or bad. spanning back 50-70 thousand years. It’s now possible to person. Skoltech Professor Philipp Khaitovich published having made a well thought-out, grown-up choice.

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Stanislav Smirnov AREA: MATHEMATICS

POSITION: PROFESSOR

DEGREE: PHD IN MATHEMATICS / AWARDS: FIELDS MEDALIST (2010)

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDIES

#ouruniversities Skoltech’s task is to modernize to change things. If, in Soviet times, our universities were at our education. It is important to understand that, on the the cutting edge of science, since then we have fallen behind one hand, any university in the world is a very conservative by nearly 30 years. We would like to finally catch up. entity. European universities, ever since they were founded about a thousand years ago, generate new knowledge and #inpractice Skoltech is closely linked to innovative sec- teach students, meaning their fundamental tasks haven’t tors of the economy with practical applications of science. changed. On the other hand, scientists are society’s main in- Naturally, a significant part of fundamental science has al- novators. Even if they are conservative, they will be the first ways been focused on application, but in the past 40 years,

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the period from development to application has shrunk sig- successful that in virtually any self-respecting university, a very talented and enthusiastic students from all over Rus- gineers don’t count integrals, they work with big data. Those nificantly, and we would like universities to get involved. center like it has appeared in the last 30-40 years. For exam- sia. Skoltech does not have undergraduates, but incoming are completely different skills. Even when a mathematician In Russia, that process has failed to develop for a long time ple, the US National Science Foundation opened the Insti- graduate students are just as good. Naturally, they have a counts integrals, a computer system would normally do it for because of changes in the economy; before, research used to tute for Pure and Applied Mathematics [IPAM] 15 years ago. lot more choice than in Soviet times, when people chose them. It is important to properly understand how this system be commissioned by the government. There are several private centers not attached to universities. math because it was a prestigious yet safe choice. The prob- works in order to formulate a task for it, as opposed to count- We had a similar project in the Soviet Union in 1985 – an lem isn’t a national shortage of interested young people – ing everything by hand, like they did 50-60 years ago. #hereandnow I am spending this year primarily order by the Central Committee [of the Communist Party] there are plenty, and the leading schools are good at what at Skoltech. This year is supposed to be free from my orga- was released on the development of mathematical research they do, and many regions have schools like that. The issue #future Skoltech, like many other Russian universi- nizational work and teaching. I’d like to dedicate more time and teaching, and the establishment of the Euler Institute is more likely in teaching the basics at the bachelor’s level ties, has started to work with talented schoolchildren. to science. I have several research projects: in pure mathe- in Leningrad. The Institute exists to this day, but the plans in a modern way, and then starting work in science at the This is beneficial for both the universities and, first and matics, mathematical physics, and recently I began a very in its creation were much more ambitious. There are only graduate level. But the young people here are great! foremost, for the schoolchildren. These kinds of projects exciting project with biologists. several conferences a year there, and they are currently en- can provide children with career guidance. Even the most gaged in discussion about how to expand their activities. So, #mentors The main thing in fields like this is good re- talented student acquires knowledge about the work of #puremath The country clearly needs young mathemat- we’ve been planning to create these centers for a long time, search advisors who can work on modern problems. This is a biologists from school biology courses, which are by no ical centers like our Center for Advanced Studies, and there but that didn’t happen because of perestroika. major challenge right now, as Russian science in the past 30 means the best or the most cutting-edge. The same is the has been much talk about it in recent years. Among the old- years has become somewhat insular. That doesn’t mean that case with math. In these courses, they don’t talk about est and most famous centers in the world is the Institut des #rejuvenation A lot of talented young people are we don’t have leading scientists, it means that we don’t have how scientists work, or about how mathematics can be Hautes Études Scientifiques in Paris [IHES] and the Institute moving to mathematics right now. If you look at the incom- cutting-edge research. That needs to be fixed. applied to modern life, about the way engineers apply it for Advanced Study at Princeton [IAS]. One was founded in ing classes in mathematics at the Saint Petersburg State today. Some of the new projects try to change the situa- the 1950s, the other in the 1930s, serving as a workplace for University and Higher School of Economics, where I serve #past In Russia, students are still taught to count hun- tion by building that bridge between schoolchildren and Albert Einstein and Kurt Friedrich Gödel. This model is so on the advisory board for mathematics, there are many dreds of integrals by hand, even though now, of course, en- universities.

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#symbol When asked to describe my research with scientist and as a person – is the fact that I am a natural the aid of a simple artifact, I chose a monkey wrench (also builder. I am a builder and a chemist, whose work and known as the Ford wrench and adjustable spanner wrench, life are one in the same. I have handcrafted many things. in general terms). This wrench is a versatile multi-tool used As a hobby, I have built houses and garages, furniture, to assemble, construct, fasten and tighten many things. In toys, and more. As a kid, I would use various tools to take particular, it was an early invention that became a standard things apart and then put them back together to function issue tool with every Ford Model A due to fact that it could in new ways. When I was five, I made what I like to refer help maintain many things on one of the first mass produced to as a “chopper trike.” To me, building is a creative broadly affordable automobiles. Now this tool is an essential endeavor where I use my intuition and my tools to create for any builder, tradesman, or fixer who wishes to construct, something truly original. As a chemist as well, I have used repair, or manufacture products. The Monkey’s Wrench is many tools to discover new molecules and materials, to also the title of one of my favorite books written by Italian build new scientific instruments, and to elucidate new writer and chemist Primo Levi. The story is told by a narrator, material properties and the mechanisms that govern their a chemist that swaps stories with a builder (rigger) that functions. I have also built world-renowned educational solves a technical industrial problem of true grit; and also and research programs, as well as large centers of details how the chemist saved his Italian paint factory from scientific excellence. Keith Stevenson economic disaster at the hands of a Russian anchovy canner. I read this book just prior to going to graduate school and was #hereandnow Right now I’m building a Skoltech AREA: MOLECULAR CHEMISTRY influenced by the stories of how a chemist can be a creator, an center with several new “wrenches” for electrochemical innovator and builder of many things. energy storage that will train a new generation of builders to POSITION: PROFESSOR, ASSOCIATE PROVOST, CREI DIRECTOR support the growth of the energy industry in Russia and the DEGREE: PHD #assembling As a chemist by trade, I use the world. We will demonstrate materials, devices and systems

PLACE OF WORK: SKOLTECH CENTER FOR ELECTROCHEMICAL ENERGY STORAGE AND CENTER FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS periodic table to discover new molecules and materials. that provide the basis for innovative opportunities for the In reflection, I realize that my defining trait – both as a creation of advanced energy technologies.

SKOLTECH 246 247 PEOPLE CREATE "In recent years, mathematics has not only become important, but an absolutely vital, key element in the development of multidisciplinary areas of knowledge, becoming the main driver of progress, an interface through which humanity interprets the achievements of basic science. But I would measure the potential success of this The launch of the book The Mathematical book in the number of kids Walks was the culmination of a fruitful that choose this profession, collaboration between Skoltech and the just as I chose it in my day." People Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of ALEXANDER KULESHOV PRESIDENT OF SKOLTECH, and time Sciences RAS ACADEMICIAN SKOLTECH 248 249 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ he launch of the new book The Mathematical Walks became one of the most prom- inent popular science publishing projects of spring 2017, with 2,000 copies printed by the Paulsen publishing house. The book included 25 interviews with leading Russian scientists and mathematicians. Conversations on a wide range of topics with Fields medalists Sergey Novikov, Grigory Margulis, Stanislav Smirnov and other leading mathematicians already received hundreds of thousands of online hits on the pages of leading socio-political and scientific media out- lets, and have now become a unique collection in the printed edition. The presentation of the new edition took place on 8 June 2017 at Skoltech. A series of events were held throughout the same year in Moscow, Kazan, Ufa and other Russian cities, with the participation of The Mathematical Walks in- terviewees, university students, young scientists, and physics and mathematics high school students.

SKOLTECH 250 251 5 ШАГОВ В БУДУЩЕЕ #NEWUNIVERSITY #BESTCAMPUS #EASTERNRING #HERZOG&DEMEURON

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SKOLTECH 252 #5 THE NEW SKOLTECH CAMPUS, THE EASTERN RING COMPLEX, IS LOCATED ON THE GROUNDS 200 professors OF THE SKOLKOVO INNOVATION HUB (MOSCOW). 360 postdocs and researchers PROJECT BY ARCHITECTURAL FIRM 1200 MSc and PhD students HERZOG & DE MEURON (SWITZERLAND)

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TOTAL AREA OF THE FIRST STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT: 11.35 HA

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TOTAL AREA OF BUILDING: 133,979 M2 NUMBER OF STORIES ABOVE GROUND LEVEL: 3 NUMBER OF STORIES BELOW GROUND LEVEL: 1 HEIGHT OF BUILDING: 22.42 M DIAMETER OF BUILDING: 280 M great science CIRCUMFERENCE: 880 M excellent education 1ST STAGE COMPLETED: SPRING 2018 changing the world PLANNED INAUGURATION OF FIRST STAGE OF NEW COMPLEX: people create 2018 new university

YOU CAN ENROLL IN ONE OF THE FOLLOWING 10 MASTER OF SCIENCE PROGRAMS:

Advanced and Biotechnology Computational Data Energy Digital Engineering Science and Science Systems Technologies Engineering

Materials Mathematical Petroleum Photonics Space and Science and Theoretical Engineering and Quantum Engineering Systems Physics Materials

Full-time (2 years) Instruction in English Tuition-free Details and application: Moscow, Russia msc.skoltech.ru