Skoltech faculty prospectus August 2014

FAC ULT Y PRO SP EC TUS
AUGUST 2014

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
2
AUGUST 2014
Welcome to Skoltech
I’d like to introduce you to Skoltech — a new model for Russian high-er
education, bridging science and innovation to impact the world we
live in. We are bringing together a fusion of exceptional Russian and
international talent, creating key partnerships, and a world-class
infrastructure to make of Skoltech an institute capable of becoming
an engine of economic growth. Our systematic approach for creating
impact in society sets us apart. We directly engage with industry and
society to understand their needs, then educate graduate students
and conduct research to strategically improve standards of living and
companies’ global competitiveness.
In just two years, we have conducted a stakeholders analysis, de-veloped
a comprehensive research strategy, and founded six Centers
for Research, Education and Innovation to address the needs of our
stakeholders — businesses, government and society. Our faculty
includes top researchers and educators from around the world, in-cluding
Prof. Anton Berns, Prof. Victor Kotelianski and Nobel Laure-ate
Sidney Altman. We have also created opportunities for talented
Russians to return to Russia — a number of our professors are from
the greater Russian Diaspora. We’ve launched educational programs
in IT, Energy, Space and Biomedicine, matriculated students from 19
countries, and plan to inaugurate more Masters and Ph.D. programs.
Our students have already demonstrated their unique potential by
founding their own companies, securing funding from Venture Capi-talists,
and entering Top 10 in international competitions such as the
CleanTech Challenge and MIT’s 100k Competition. We eagerly look
forward to what they will achieve in their two years at Skolkovo.
Our list of partners and friends is growing with every year. Since
founding our key partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology
(MIT), we have formed ties with a number of the world’s other
leading universities. The Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology,
St. Petersburg State University and the University of Groningen (the
Netherlands) are just a few of the institutional pillars on which we are
building our foundation.
We have a successful track record of collaboration on research
and educational programs with industrial partners, such as United
Aircraft Company, System Operator of the United Power System and
CISCO. Despite our short history, we have grown rapidly in the last
two years and laid the cornerstone for our future community of 200
professors, 440 postdocs, and 1,200 students. Please read on to un-derstand
why I am so confident in saying that at Skoltech, we are doing
more than graduating leaders, we are preparing agents of change.
It is my great pleasure to introduce you to Skoltech,
its programs and its faculty.
As most educators would readily acknowledge,
the predominant picture of a university as primar-ily
a place of passive instruction imparted through
received knowledge is a relic of the past. The mod-ern
university is a center of critical enquiry for the
purpose of questioning received wisdom and open-ing
new frontiers. The modern university is thus an
incubator of innovation and paradigm shifts. And its
soul is its faculty, its legacy its students.
Skoltech is an ambitious project by the Russian
Federation to bring together the rich intellectual
traditions and accomplishments of its talented cit-izens
and the best practices and developments in
international science and technology to establish an
innovation-driven Russian graduate university with
an international footprint. It seeks to combine re-search,
education and innovation seamlessly with-out
the confines of artificial barriers imposed by
traditional disciplinary divisions.
A great university is not an isolated center of
learning, but a microcosm in constant and dynamic
interactions with an ever-changing world around it
from which it draws its inspiration and defines its
mission. Institution building therefore never ceases
even in the case of an “established” university. And
in the case of a university at its birth, like Skoltech,
the challenges are formidable, but truly exciting
and energizing and are an opportunity to define the
future.
We are indeed very fortunate to have the strong
and enthusiastic support of, and active participa-tion
by, very distinguished scholars, researchers
and innovators from around the world. Our faculty
members, Founding Faculty Fellows and academic
administrators come from many parts of the world
as well as from the Russian Federation and the Rus-sian
diaspora.
I welcome you to learn about our faculty and pro-grams
and join us in this endeavor!
Edward Crawley
President
Raj Rajagopalan
Provost

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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AUGUST 2014
Table of contents
4S
koltech Explained
8
Research
10
Campus and Facilities
CREDITS
TEXT AND CONTENT
DEVELOPMENT
Ilan Goren
GRAPHIC CONCEPT AND DESIGN
Denis Landin
COVER IMAGE COURTESY OF
Herzog and DeMeuron
IMAGES COURTESY OF
Skolkovo Foundation,
Skoltech, Ilan Goren and
Flickr users (under Cre-ative
Commons License,
see images on pages for
credit and attribution)
PLEASE NOTE
Every effort has been
made to ensure the
accuracy of information in
this Faculty Prospectus at
the time of going to print.
However, changes and
developments are part of
the life of the university
and research centers and
alterations may occur
to programs, staff and
tracks described in the
prospectus. Please refer
to the Skoltech and Fac-ulty
websites for the most
up-to-date information.
http://www.skoltech.ru/en/
http://faculty.skoltech.ru/
HERZOG & DE MEURON
????V V VV
12
Meet Members
of our Faculty:
Iskander Akhatov
Natalia Berloff
Anton Berns
Janusz Bialek
Zafer Gürdal
Victor Kotelianski
Raj Rajagopalan
Konstantin Severinov
Keith Stevenson
Anatoly Dymarsky
Alessandro Golkar
Victor Lempitsky
Alexander Ustinov
Kelvin Willoughby
35
Partnership with MIT
36
Careers and Positions
37
Funding
38
Students
40
Skoltech Milestones
41
Life in Moscow
42
Russian:
Say it по-русски

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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AUGUST 2014
The Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) is a
unique university. To help you get started, let us explain the basics.
Skoltech supports
a MULTIDISCIPLINARY
APPROACH. Cross-cutting
and innovative
collaboration are core
to our mission
Skoltech Explained
Established in 2011,
Skoltech is a PRIVATE
GRADUATE RESEARCH
UNIVERSITY in Skolkovo,
a suburb of Moscow,
Russia, with English
as the language of
instruction
The OPPORTUNITIES
we offer are based
on what we call the
“triple-helix model”:
a model that weaves
INNOVATION seamlessly
into RESEARCH and EDU-CATION
We bring IDEAS to IMPACT
society and business,
while emphasizing
FUNDAMENTAL research
of high standards. We
aim to solve real prob-lems
in Russia and the
world. PRACTICAL use
of science is key
The university and its
Centers for Research,
Education and Innova-tion
(CREIs) address
critical challenges in
6 MAJOR “TRACKS”:
INFORMATION, BIOMEDICINE,
ENERGY, SPACE, NUCLEAR
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
and SCIENCE CUTTING
ACROSS THESE AREAS

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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Skoltech Explained
We believe that
CREATIVE PEOPLE must
have INDEPENDENCE of
thought and academic
FREEDOM
Skoltech is a PARTNER
OF MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technolo-gy).
We work together
on research, curricu-lum
and planning, and
innovation
Our FACULTY, many
of whom are senior,
INTERNATIONALLY REPUTED
ACADEMIC LEADERS, hail
from VARIOUS COUNTRIES
and BACKGROUNDS —
east and west, north
and south, academia
and industry
Skoltech is an
indispensable part of
the SKOLKOVO ECOSYSTEM
that comprises a
COMPLETE HIGH-TECH
CITY with a number of
PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL
R&D CENTERS and START-UP
INCUBATORS
A CENTER FOR
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
INNOVATION (CEI) operates
at Skoltech. Its main
goal is to make
Skoltech AN ENGINE OF
ECONOMIC GROWTH by
rapidly implementing
ideas to create impact,
by engaging students
and faculty in E&I
(entrepreneurship and
innovation), and by
accelerating research
outcomes toward
commercialization and
broader social impact
HERZOG & DE MEURON

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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Skoltech Explained
Building a research university from scratch is exciting and requires
pioneers. With the help of our partner, the Skolkovo Foundation, a lot
has been achieved since we broke the ground — now it is time to look
ahead, to new challenges.
IN 2016
a NEW CAMPUS building is
planned to open its doors
By 2020 we aim to:
Establish all of our 15 Centers
for Research Education
and Innovation
Employ 200 professors
Host 440 postdoctoral associates
Educate 1200 students
HERZOG & DE MEURON
IMAGE COURTESY OF MOHAMMAD AMIRUL ISLAM

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Skoltech Explained
IF YOU THINK that building a new,
innovation-driven technological
university from the ground up is a
rare opportunity — YOU ARE RIGHT.
IF YOU CARE about your scientific
independence, are passionate
about cross-cutting research, want
to make an impact on real-world
issues and enjoy teaming up with
global industries and researchers
from top international universities
and research institutions — WE ARE
RIGHT FOR YOU.
IF YOU HAVE a pioneering spirit —
YOU ARE RIGHT FOR US.
3 THINGS YOU
MIGHT LIKE
TO KNOW
ABOUT US
1
2
3
ENGLISH is Skoltech’s
WORKING LANGUAGE. But in
our labs, cafeterias and
lecture halls you can also
hear Swedish, Dutch, Ital-ian,
Hebrew, Urdu — and
Russian.
Among our INTERNATIONAL
PARTNERS are institutions
such as MIT, Whitehead
Institute, Groningen
School of Medicine, Delft
University of Technology,
KU Leuven, Technical
University of Berlin and
others.
We are GROWING: recruit-ing,
devising new edu-cational
programs and
expanding our CREIs.
WE ARE RECRUITING FACULTY AT A RAPID PACE AND HOPE YOU WILL APPLY. DROP US A LINE AT FACULTY-INTEREST@SKOLKOVOTECH.RU,
CHECK THE INFORMATION ON APPLICATION, POSITIONS AND CAREER OPPORTUNITIES ON PAGES 36-37 OR VISIT THE FOLLOWING LINKS
http://faculty.skoltech.ru/Positions/Listings http://sktech-search.mit.edu/ http://sktech-postdoc.mit.edu/

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AUGUST 2014
GUIDELINES
FOR THE
OPERATION AND
ADMINISTRATION
OF RESEARCH
BY CREI
PARTICIPANTS
INCLUDE
Grant and contract
administration
Expected or allowable
research expendi-tures
(faculty, student,
postdoc, and researcher
salaries; equipment;
travel; materials and
services, etc.)
Management
of salary costs
Reporting require-ments
(technical, fiscal,
equipment and property,
intellectual property)
Financial review and
control requirements
Research
The major component of the Skoltech concept is the establishment of
Centers for Research, Education and Innovation (CREIs). These are our
main scientific growth engines.
Skoltech has defined six priority
areas for its research efforts —
Biomedicine, IT, Energy, Space,
Nuclear, as well as science cut-ting
across these areas (e.g. ma-terials).
The SKOLTECH CENTERS FOR
RESEARCH, EDUCATION AND INNOVATION
(CREIS) are the key building blocks in
the effort to develop a world-class
graduate university that combines
education, research and innova-tion
seamlessly. Skoltech plans to
form 15 CREIs in the six research
priority areas.
The CREIs pursue LEADING RE-SEARCH
in their fields, deliver WORLD-CLASS
GRADUATE EDUCATION PROGRAMS
and generate results that can form
the basis for INNOVATION AND ENTREPRE-NEURSHIP
ACTIVITIES at Skoltech and
in Russian industry. Importantly,
CREIs will build capacity of all kinds
at Skoltech, and will be designed to
have broad impact on Russia.
The establishment of CREIs in
CLOSE COOPERATION WITH ONE (OR MORE)
INTERNATIONAL AND RUSSIAN ACADEMIC
PARTNERS is done because we believe
this is the most efficient and fastest
way to establish a new world-class
graduate research university, com-plementing
the existing research
and educational system in Russia
and DEVELOPING A GATEWAY between
Russia and the rest of the world.
The Skoltech CREIs embody the
increasingly important collabora-tive
and multi-university research
partnerships required for multi-disciplinary
advanced research.
Each CREI has Skoltech as the lead
university (reflecting the flow of
funding) with major universities or
research institutions as partners.
Thus, Skoltech researchers are
brought into collaboration with re-searchers
from both international
and Russian institutions. For exam-ple,
Skoltech cooperated with the
University of Groningen and Vavilov
Institute of General Genetics to es-tablish
its first CREI.
Our first CREI, out of a total of
fifteen, focuses on one of science’s
Holy Grails: Stem Cell Research.
The center’s team of researchers
tackle the most pressing questions
related to these “magic cells” capa-ble
of transforming into expert cells,
which could help treat currently in-curable
diseases — and save mil-lions
of lives.
Skoltech’s biomedicine students
attend classes at the center, lo-cated
at University Medical Center
Groningen.
Professor
Konstantin
Severinov,
Associate Dean
of Faculty, gives
a presentation
to students and
faculty

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Research
3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT OUR APPROACH TO RESEARCH
1 2 3 Skoltech supports a mul-tidisciplinary
approach.
Cross-cutting and inno-vative
collaborations are
core to our mission.
We believe that scientists
must have independence
of thought and academic
freedom.
The Skoltech Centers for Research, Education and
Innovation (CREIs) support practical implementation
of science in six major “Tracks”: Information, Biomed-icine,
Energy, Space, Nuclear Science and Technology
and Science cutting across these areas.
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://vimeo.com/63611829
Life-at-Skoltech/Research http://www.skoltech.ru/en/crei/
Professor Raj Rajagopalan, Provost
(right) and professor Victor Kotelianski,
Director, Skoltech Center for Infectious
Diseases and Functional Genomics,
chat during the Toward Therapies of the
Future conference, May 2014

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AUGUST 2014
Campus and Facilities
If you build it, they will come, the visionary protagonist from the film
“Field of Dreams” famously believed. So do we.
We are building Skoltech’s new
campus from the ground up —
and the professors and students
are coming. Master’s and PhD
students, faculty members and
postdoctoral researchers hailing
from more than 20 countries, have
already set base at the newly con-structed
Hypercube, our current
hub. But in 2016, when the remark-able
new main building opens,
Skoltech’s development program
will reach a key milestone. Life
and work here will become more
streamlined, inspiring — and fun.
The gleaming white campus, lo-cated
in western Moscow, was de-signed
by world-renowned Swiss
architects Herzog and de-Meuron.
They envisioned a 60-hectare com-plex
that will house an array of fa-cilities
specifically designed for the
needs of students and faculty mem-bers.
State-of-the-art lecture halls,
top notch labs, user-centered pub-lic
spaces and a library enveloped
with tall windows and awash with
natural light (yes, even in winter), all
lay the ground for interdisciplinary
research, academic programs and
technological innovation.
With R&D centers operated by in-dustry
leaders such as Cisco, Micro-soft,
IBM and Intel only minutes away
from the main building, reaching the
business and startup community will
be a matter of picking up a cappuc-cino
at the cafeteria — and going for
a stroll. Residential and shopping ar-eas
have already begun to rise from
the ground and a high-speed rail link
to Moscow is planned. When it opens,
a cosmopolitan city buzzing with en-ergy
will be just a short train ride
away from Skoltech’s new home.
Our field of dreams is taking
shape.
WATCH THE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=btQN2BX2IFg
HERZOG & DE MEURON
HERZOG & DE MEURON

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Campus
4 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ABOUT THE CAMPUS
1 2 3 4 Some of our
professors take
part in designing
their own offices
and labs.
The Renova Labs building is scheduled for delivery
in 2015 for equipment and lab set-up. It will house a
multi-disciplinary environment, suitable for ma-terials
and chemical laboratories, biomedical and
stem cell research, microelectronics, and testing
equipment with heights allowable to 8 meters and
maximum floor loading of up to 10,000 kN. The facility
is equipped with laboratory gases, fume hoods and
in-ceiling delivery systems.
Internal spaces are
designed for maximum
overlap among the 6 core,
science and technology
“Tracks”– energy, biomed-ical,
IT, space and nuclear
science and technology.
Architects have
created a web
of pedestrian
links and quiet
yards. The vi-sion:
chance
encounters
made easy.

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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AUGUST 2014
Meet Members of our Faculty
Professor Iskander Akhatov
Director, Skoltech Center
for Hydrocarbon Recovery
“Let’s face it”, sitting in
a Moscow café, Iskander
Akhatov fiddles with a
polystyrene coffee cup,
“oil will remain the main
energy source for ages.”

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
He takes a gulp from the steamy
cappuccino.
“I left behind a very comfortable
position in an American university
in order to come back to Russia. I
guess you can say that you need to
be a crazy realist to make such a
move. Well, perhaps I am that crazy
realist.” Akhatov asked for a leave of
absence from North Dakota State
University, where he holds a ten-ured
position.
“Cheap, high-quality oil does not
jump out of the ground and into the
gas tanks anymore,” he continues.
“We are entering the age of un-conventional
reserves, where we
will mostly extract energy that is
squeezed in shale rocks and trapped
in nano pores. If you want oil drops
to be pushed out of the ground you
will need to learn much about the
physics and chemistry of these mul-tiscale
objects.” The Russian-born
professor, who moved to the US 13
years ago, cups the coffee. It now
reaches drinkable temperature.
Hydrocarbon recovery should be
at the forefront of science, he says,
with an approach that is sober and
unflinching.
“The only way to tackle complex IT,
physics and engineering issues that
are inherent to this age of unconven-tional
reserves we are entering is to
build a hub which collaborates with
major energy companies and inter-national
schools.
“Among the center’s list of ac-ademic
partners are UT Austin,
TA&MU (USA), University of Calgary
(Canada), Herriot-Watt (UK), all of-fering
world class petroleum engi-neering
programs. These will help
build state of the art labs in Skoltech
which will tackle complex issues
like geomechanics, chemical and
thermal-enhanced recovery.”
“I talked to Russian oil companies,
I understand their needs,” he
explains, “Russian companies have
two options. One is to buy expertise
from service providers abroad
which is expensive and has to be
done over and over again. The other
option is to come to Skoltech.
Here we will be exchanging
knowledge with the international
scene, teach and develop skills.
As for American academics and
multinational companies, Skoltech
opens the door to a new field where
they can apply their knowledge and
skills. Everybody gains.”
SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR
HYDROCARBON
RECOVERY
AIMS TO
Develop an international
research program in oil
and gas staffed by highly
qualified researchers
and equipped with
up-to-date laboratory
equipment
Recruit new faculty and
develop an interna-tionally
competitive
graduate program in oil
and gas.
Improve Skoltech
graduate students’
skills through graduate
schools of collaborating
universities
Focus specifically on
Geomechanics, geo-physical
exploration
and monitoring of hy-drocarbon
production;
Shale oil: development
of new technologies for
Russian shale oil fields
(Bazhenov, Domaink);
Heavy oil: development
of new technologies
for Russian heavy oil
fields; Unconventional
gas: development of
new technologies gas
hydrates and other new
gas reserves.
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Iskander-Akhatov
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Professor Akhatov plans
to spend his free time
in Moscow “going to the
ballet with my family”
and visiting the incredi-ble
monasteries around
Moscow, the so-called
“Golden Ring”.
His work focuses on micro- and nano-meter-
scale fluid dynamics; emulsions,
suspensions, and complex fluids in micro and
nano-channels and porous media; dynamics
and acoustics of bubbles and bubbly liquids;
multiphase systems; applications of above
listed research subjects to the oil & gas,
materials, and biomedicine industries.
Fargo, North Dakota, was home for him
and his family for more than a decade.
Akhatov saw the film and knows the popu-lar
TV series about a sinister murderer who
commits grisly crimes. “Fargo the movie
is brilliant and very hard. But real Fargo is
the safest town in the US. It is the best and
cleanest place to raise a family”.
IMAGE COURETSY OF RICHARD MASONER , CYCLELICIOUS, FLICKR

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Natalia Berloff
Dean of Faculty
For someone who
unleashed quantum
tornadoes and then taught
them how to dance in a fluid
trapped on a semiconductor
chip, Professor Natalia
Berloff comes across as
a remarkably calm person.

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
NATALIA
BERLOFF’S
RESEARCH
INTERESTS
FOCUS ON
Nonlinear waves
Superfluidity
Quantum fluids
Bose-Einstein
condensates
Superfluid turbulence
Coherence in non-equi-librium
quantum
systems
Strong light-matter
coupling in solid-state
systems
Finite temperature
atomic condensates
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HER
1 2 3 Read her description of her famous “quan-tum
tornadoes” research: “Being half-light
and half-matter these particles are feath-er-
light and move quickly around, sloshing
and cascading like water in a mountain
river.” Now we can challenge anyone to say
that mathematicians and physicists lack a
sense of poetry.
She brought back her
children from the UK to
Moscow because:“It is a
big vibrant city — it offers
ice skating, theater, and
an opportunity for my kids
to have a stronger sense
of self identity”.
A word of advice to for-eign
faculty: “Once you
get to know your way
(around Moscow)
a whole world will
open up to you. There
are lifelong friendships
to be made”.
Along with colleagues from Cam-bridge
University the Russian born
researcher created hundreds of
twister-like vortexes and studied a
new quantum particle called polari-ton.
The technology could be used to
measure movements to astonishing
precision. So perhaps it is no sur-prise
that Skoltech’s Dean of Faculty
is unfazed by challenges. Even un-precedented
ones.
“We would like to build a unique
gateway to western tech science
and skills. That’s what sets Skoltech
apart from other Russian academic
institutions. When Russian indus-try
will need western expertise we
would be the go-to place“, says the
applied mathematician heading
the Cambridge-Skoltech Quantum
Fluids Laboratory (CSQF). She now
plans to develop mirror labs — one
in Moscow, the other in Cambridge.
Berloff seems to be constantly on
the go. When we catch her for a short
conversation she is in between trips
— giving summer classes in Cuba,
assessing PhD candidates in Fin-land
and attending a conference in
Germany. She splits the rest of her
time between Cambridge and Mos-cow.
But when asked about break-ing
travel records or centuries’ old
glass ceilings — Berloff was the first
ever woman appointed Professor of
Mathematics at Cambridge in 800
years — she prefers to steer the
conversation away from personal
milestones.
“As for faculty, our mission is to
track and retain the best. We need
people with background and ed-ucation
that do not exist in other
places. And then we need to create
a cross-cutting environment where
they can prosper. Only then do you
know you have succeeded. If you
follow in someone else’s footsteps
nothing will happen”.
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Natalia-Berloff
“There are excellent schools in
Russia but the fluidity and flexibility
offered by Skoltech is a unique
advantage. We don’t have rigidly
defined departments so students can
fine-tune their own study program —
starting, for example, in the energy
track and then switching to IT.”

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
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Professor Anton Berns
for Stem Cell Research
When Anton Berns was ap-proached
by the president
of MIT with a tentative offer
to join Skoltech, the Dutch
chemist and molecular ge-neticist
was caught a little off
guard: ”I had no idea what he
was talking about”.

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FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
But then Berns, who holds a se-nior
position with the Netherlands
Cancer Institute and is one of the
world’s leading scientists in using
genetically modified mice to study
cancer, heard from another prom-inent
name in the field. It was Ru-dolf
Jaenisch, a biologist at MIT’s
Whitehead Institute. “He told me
that Skoltech is a great project.
That got me interested,” says Pro-fessor
Berns. He is now the direc-tor
of the Skoltech Center for Stem
Cell Research.
The Stem Cells CREI (Center for
Research Education and Innovation)
which Berns heads, is the result of a
collaboration between Skoltech and
a string of international and Russian
partners. Along with the Moscow
based institute, which leads the pro-ject,
partners include institutions
such as ERIBA (European Research
Institute for the Biology of Ageing)
at the University of Groningen and
the Hubrecht Institute (both based
in Netherlands), the Whitehead In-stitute,
and the Institute of General
Genetics of the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Moscow.
“I’ve been on the board of many
institutions and what I like about
Skoltech is the CREI concept”, says
Berns. “Building research centers
with the direct support of external
partners who are motivated to do so
because they get substantial fund-ing
— this is a great idea. That was
the most important motivation to
join.”
As for the major challenges and
tasks ahead, Berns stresses that
“biomedicine is a very collaborative
activity. It is our goal to facilitate
an exchange of people and materi-als
- and be able to ship everything
around. We might also consider
creating a niche in Skoltech that is
slightly less dependent on ordering
and receiving materials, which is
currently still a challenge.”
SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR STEM
CELL RESEARCH
AIMS TO DEVELOP
Deeper insight into the
science and applications
of stem cells as well as
the techniques to study
them in a data-intensive
world, targeted towards
the development of new
therapies and drugs.
Reprogramming ap-proaches
for producing
human and mouse iPS
cells.
Propagation of adult
stem cells from various
tissues and organs.
Differentiation pro-grams
and methods for
producing differentiated
cells from pluripotent
cells.
Deeper understanding
of genome stability and
epigenetic changes
during reprogramming,
proliferation and differ-entiation.
Insight into gene
networks involved in
stem cell regulation and
regeneration.
Stem cell models to
study inherited and ac-quired
human diseases.
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Anton-Berns
“But my most important task right
now is to recruit excellent people”,
he points out. “Since I have a track
record of running and managing
institutes, I want to help Skoltech find
motivated people that share the vision
on which Skoltech is built.”
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Professor Berns’ work focuses on
mouse models of cancer, specif-ically
cells-of-origin of small cell
and non-small cell lung cancer;
thoracic tumors; and gene therapy.
For over 30 years, Berns has used viruses
as a key tool for cancer research, a strategy
which in turn has led to the identification
of genes critical for cancer and stem cell
maintenance.
He describes Skoltech as
“an opportunity to join an
exciting project before I get
some rest. I plan to stop
working when I turn 75”.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MAGGIE BARTLETT, NHGRI
IMAGE COURTESY OF ANKUR SINGH AND ANDRÉS GARCÍA, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

18
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Janusz Bialek
for Energy Systems
“Here is what I would like
to achieve in Moscow”,
says Janusz Bialek a few
days before he moves home
from Durham, the UK, to
Russia. “The Energy Systems
CREI will become a world
leader in research”.

19
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
He pauses for a breath. One has
to wonder whether Bialek, who had
moved from Poland to the UK 25
years ago and went on to become
one of Britain’s leading experts on
power systems and an advocate
for a sober approach to the usage
of electricity, would settle for this
not-so-short list of ambitious goals.
But there is more. “The center will
actively collaborate with the best
universities in the world, like MIT,
Caltech and many others.”
Generally speaking, Bialek’s re-search
deals with achieving stable,
secure, sustainable and economic
supply of electricity while meet-ing
the challenges of reducing CO2
emissions. Yet over the years he has
steadily and constantly expanded his
fields of interest and refuses to stick
to rigidly defined disciplines.
“You simply achieve better results
by conducting cross-cutting re-search,”
he explains. “Science tends
to be a bit compartmentalized, but
we will try a different approach. At
Skoltech, scientific boundaries are
very thin, and all the CREIs will col-laborate.
For example, I have been
approached by a Skoltech string
theorist, one of the best in the world,
who would like to team up. There is
no other place in the world where
a string theorist can work together
with power engineers. We like to
think of ourselves as a kind of a su-per-
group”, he chuckles.
SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR
ENERGY SYSTEMS
AIMS TO
Bring the new science
and engineering needed
to address the grand
challenges of Russian
energy systems, includ-ing
reliability, efficiency,
regulations, and inter-dependencies
with other
energy infrastructures.
Develop new computa-tional
tools and power
electronics, robust net-work
architectures and
risk-aware algorithms
for optimization and
control to achieve more
flexibility and reliability.
Address undergoing
transformational chang-es
in Russian energy
systems which require
economic growth,
stronger coupling and
competition with other
options for energy deliv-ery,
expansion to remote
areas, and improved
risk-assurance of con-trol
in transmission and
distribution.
“Our center will help transform the
Russian energy industry so that it can
innovate and overcome its problems.
It will be an interdisciplinary
center, where not only power
engineers, but also mathematicians,
statisticians, economists and social
scientists will make an impact. And
we are going to do it.”
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Janusz-Bialek
2 3 Professor Bialek’s work
focuses on power system
analysis, economics and
dynamics: technical and
economic integration of
renewables in power sys-tems;
and the prevention
of electricity blackouts.
His wife is a sculptor. “The
Moscow art scene is so
vibrant, that I had no prob-lem
convincing her to move
here. I speak Russian, and
I think we both grasp the
gap between the stereo-type
of a chaotic post-sovi-et
Russia and real life”.
In an interview with New Statesman magazine Bialek
highlighted the oil-rich Gulf States’ drive towards
energy efficiency: “In Kuwait in the summer, energy
consumption is driven by air-conditioning and there
is a shortage of supply. On TV they had a little dial
that showed how close the country was to full capac-ity.
People knew they might have blackouts, so they
switched off things that weren’t needed”.
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1
IMAGE COURTESY OF GLOBAL MARINE PHOTOS

20
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Zafer Gürdal
for Advanced Structures, Processes,
and Engineered Materials (ASPEM)
When Zafer Gürdal puts
on his jacket, a silvery twin-kle
emanates from two la-pel
pins. One represents
Skoltech’s logo. The other
is a flying man, his stretched
out arms made of finite
element mesh.

21
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
It was designed by the aerospace
engineering faculty at TU Delft,
where Gürdal once taught. Nowa-days
the Dutch university is an offi-cial
research partner of Skoltech’s
ASPEM center that he heads. “I
always had this dream where I was
flying”, says Gürdal, “I would just
run in a field, jump and be airborne.”
But now the composite materials
engineer who likes to ski and used
to scuba dive, is bent on taking off in
the real world.
Along with a group of talented
researchers and postdocs he as-sembled
in Moscow, Turkish-born
Gürdal established the Skoltech
Center for Advanced Structures,
Processes, and Engineered Materi-als
(ASPEM).
“Composite materials is a multi-disciplinary
field. You need to un-derstand
structural issues, tackle
challenges in manufacturing, have
knowledge of computational meth-ods
and grasp the whole complexity
of design. This is an excellent op-portunity
for us because we aim to
achieve all that in one place: right
here. In our seven labs which will
serve as crosscutting functional
units we will put together design,
manufacturing, characterization
and after-life of composite materi-als.
This was never done in any other
place in the world.
“Of course this is very ambitious,
and the reasonable question is how
we integrate all this. So we came up
with the idea of trust areas — large
projects, such as Innovative Manu-facturing
Technologies, Infrastruc-ture
Applications, Computational
Design Methodologies, etc., which
will have smaller sub projects that
will be tackled by a group of labora-tories.
“It would not be an exaggeration
to say that the commercial applica-tions
could be endless. Economics
will play an important role, as com-posites
are still expensive. But as
we automate production and reduce
the number of parts the cost will be-come
more effective. Right now we
are modifying existing 3D printers to
build carbon fiber enforced plastics
and developing new technologies so
that we can produce anything from
small car parts through bicycles to
plane fuselages.
SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR
ADVANCED
STRUCTURES,
PROCESSES,
AND ENGINEERED
MATERIALS
(ASPEM)
FOCUSES ON
Basic and applied re-search
into developing
advanced structures
that are lighter, more
durable, more cost-ef-fective,
multi-function-al,
and environmentally
friendly.
Physical mechanics of
materials and struc-tures
Methods for multiscale
modeling of deforma-tion
and fracturing of
materials
Methods for automated
production of low-cost
structures
Physical-chemical
methods and technol-ogies
for producing
materials with multiple
constituents, such as
polymers, ceramics, and
metals
Methods for modeling
the physical and me-chanical
processes of
complex constructions
Multi-disciplinary
analysis of composite
structures
“All this will be done in Moscow with
the help of international and Russian
partners — such as KU Leuven
(Belgium), TU Delft, the Netherlands,
the University of South Carolina and
others.
“I know it sounds like fun. Why else
would I be here?”
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Zafer-Guerdal
1 2 3 Professor Gürdal received research funding
His work focuses on structural and multi-disciplinary
from NASA, as well as companies such as
design and optimization, design
Sikorsky Aircraft, Ford, Schneider Electric,
Boeing, Mc. Donnell Douglas, Lockheed
Martin, Newport News Shipbuilding, and
ALCOA. He is also one of the founders of
ADOPTECH, a small business in Virginia.
and optimization of composite materials and
structures, adaptive structures, buckling and
postbuckling of thin-walled structures, glob-al/
local design methodologies for optimization
of large complex systems, and computational
methods for design.
He finds Moscow “an
exhilarating cosmopol-itan
metropolis. People
are kind. The taxi driv-ers
are actually good.
I can cross the street
while closing my eyes
— the cars will stop!”
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
IMAGE COURTESY NICK CROSS, GURIT, FLICKR

22
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Victor Kotelianski
Director, Skoltech Center for Infectious
Diseases and Functional Genomics
If the human cell was
a battlefield, Professor
Victor Kotelianski would
serve as a general
of the revolutionary
biomedicine army.

23
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Professor Kotelianski was a VP for
His work focuses on RNAi
the French company Alnylam for
therapeutics including
five years, but insists that “Russian
ALN-RSV01, ALN-VSP,
is the most beautiful language in
ALN-PCS.
the world by far”.
The only visible pictures in
his office are on his computer
screen saver, where images
taken by his daughter, a photog-rapher,
float by.
Over the years, his scientific work
has focused on RNAi therapeutics
that could help our bodies fight off
invading viruses in completely new
ways. RNA molecules are used to
inhibit gene expression by causing
the destruction of specific mRNA
molecules which are crucial for vi-ruses’
advance on the body.
Now the seasoned researcher
is in Skoltech, where he heads the
Skoltech Center for Infectious Dis-eases
and Functional Genomics.
His austere office resembles a field
HQ. The walls are bare. The air-con-ditioning
is off.
The only evidence of the dramatic
results Kotelianski is hoping for cov-ers
his desk. Flow charts, research
proposals and post-it notes are laid
out like on a commander’s sandbox.
The Skoltech Center for Infectious
Diseases and Functional Genom-ics
will be a unique example of a
multi-disciplinary effort to develop
clinically suitable, safe and effective
siRNA (small interfering RNA) de-livery
vehicles to a range of cells. In
vivo biology will serve as an impor-tant
research tool. “Nothing like this
has ever been attempted in Russia”,
says Kotelianski.
FOR MORE INFO,
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AND AWARDS
Faculty/Victor-Kotelianski
“We are starting from scratch
and there’s a lot of hard work
ahead of us,” he says, cracking
a weary smile — and goes back
to pore over his charts.
THE SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR
INFECTIOUS
DISEASES AND
FUNCTIONAL
GENOMICS
AIMS TO
Develop a robust collab-orative
effort focused
on the development
and application of RNA
technology for medicine
and biology, with spe-cific
emphasis towards
medical conditions of
importance to Russia.
Combine expertise in
Drug Delivery, Chem-istry,
Biology and Med-icine
between experts
in the US and Russia,
including the efforts of
three Nobel Laureates.
Advance science, gen-erate
new therapeutics,
strengthen Russian
institutions, and educate
a next generation of
Russian scientists.
IMAGE COURTESY OF MAGGIE BARTLETT, NHGRI
IMAGE COURTESY OF MIKE MITCHELL, NCI
VISUALS ONLINE
IMAGE COURTESY OF NIGMS AND DAVID BUSHNELL, KEN WESTOVER AND
ROGER KORNBERG, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

section
24
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Raj Rajagopalan
Provost
Two statuettes occupy
Raj Rajagopalan’s desk.
A white bust of Aristotle
keeps company to a figurine
of the provost, sporting
a red football jersey.
The philosopher cohabitates
with the action figure.

section
25
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 One of the paintings hanging on his office wall, created by
Among his
an Australian artist, synthesizes core elements of modern
hobbies he lists
cosmology (“a favorite subject of mine”) with the spiral model of
sketching, draw-ing,
Mendeleev’s periodic table and a central, pre-monistic Indian
and reading
principle which posits that the self is the same as the force
of “mostly
behind the universe. “This is expressed in Sanskrit by the simple
non-fiction of
statement, ‘Thou art that’. As a scientist and an atheist, I love the
all kinds and
superposition of the inner world and the outer. The painting is a
popular science
birthday gift from my wife. I think of her when I look at it”.
books”.
His favorite
Moscow pas-time
is visiting
art galleries:
“I can spend
hours just
looking at a
few paintings.”
“I got both as presents” he chuck-les,
“perhaps they say something
not only about my background
but also my complex role here at
Skoltech.
“I oversee all aspects of academic
operations and life on the campus
and beyond. Yet I am an academic at
heart. Being an academic adminis-trator
without having gone through
the experience of being an academ-ic
is like being a painter who shows
others how to paint by numbers!”,
exclaims the university’s chief ac-ademic
officer, who is a chemical
engineer by background. “If one has
not penetrated the soul of a teacher
and researcher, one cannot be the
best academic administrator.”
As for the decision to join Skoltech,
the Indian-born researcher and ad-ministrator
explains that “I worked
on similar projects in Singapore,
the Middle East and Kazakhstan.
Imagine the pioneers of the past —
going to a new land and building
a new future. The excitement and
challenges are beyond imagination,
words and compare.”
“In an academic institution at its
inception one is the author of one’s
own future. Not only does one try
to achieve one’s own dreams and
build one’s own career, one also
has the opportunity — in fact, the
necessity — to create one’s own en-vironment.
“To me building something, espe-cially
a university of the future, from
scratch is exciting.”
FOR MORE INFO,
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AND AWARDS
Faculty/Raj-Rajagopalan
“In the case of a university in its
formative stage, each day brings
challenges that are either routine or
unpredictable. It could be something
as ‘simple’ as setting up policies,
procedures and processes for a
routine activity or as challenging as
projecting a vision for the future for a
new faculty member or student.
RAJ
RAJAGOPALAN’S
RESEARCH
INTERESTS
FOCUS ON
Colloid physics
and complex fluids
Liquid-state physics
Biomolecular science
Computational
chemistry
Pharmaceutical
separations
Microrheology of
extracellular matrices
Motility of cancer cells
in the extracellular
matrices

26
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Konstantin Severinov
Associate Dean of Faculty,
Director of Biomedicine Program
Konstantin Severinov lays
his hands on a cafeteria
table peppered with
breadcrumbs. “So you’d like
to know what we do?”, the
microbiologist flicks aside
his mane of silvery hair,
“we solve riddles.”

27
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 He sees biology “like a Rube
Goldberg machine, a crazy contrap-tion
that does what it is supposed
to do but in a very redundant and
often irrational way. Life evolved by
thoughtless tinkering, not rational
design”.
Severinov wears Skoltech
branded t-shirts for
interviews. For his latest
media appearance he
sported a casual grey
sweatshirt on a morning
show discussion of syn-thetic
biology.
He doesn’t have an office in
Skoltech “because it’s too petit
bourgeois. I have five labs world-wide
without offices and I want to
keep it this way”. The professor
can be spotted roaming the insti-tute’s
corridors in search of a quiet
corner for himself and his laptop.
“The overreaching theme is that
when we study gene expression of
bacteria and viruses or when we
study antibiotics — we really do it for
fun. Yes, there is a bit of a childish
thing to being a scientist. It is like a
riddle game. There must be an an-swer
out there to a problem you are
studying, but you do not know it, and
you keep looking for it. This is how
science and innovation grow.”
The Russian born scientist, who
returned to Moscow a decade ago,
shifts a few pieces of dry ciabatta
around the table’s surface. “As for
innovation in Russia, it will grow
from a scientific revival that will have
to come from within. The Russian
diaspora should play a role in this.
When I talk to Russian expats who
consider coming back, I tell them
that to have an impact is empower-ing.
And this is what Skoltech can -
and should - do for this country.
FOR MORE INFO,
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Faculty/Konstantin-Severinov
Skoltech is an important project
because it aims to live up to
high expectations in research
and education excellence. That
is why I moved back to Russia.
I maintain my lab in the US.
But I’d like to create a situation
where the Russian scientists
that work with me in America
can perform the same activities
in Russia.”
KONSTANTIN
SEVERINOV’S WORK
FOCUSES ON
RNA transcription and bacterial
RNA polymerase structure-func-tion
and mechanism. “From the
point of view of an engineer, bac-teria
always do what is right for
them: at any given time, only the
right genes whose products are
needed work. We look for ways to
understand and control this pro-cess.
If you develop an antibiotic
that blocks the expression of a
nasty bug’s gene that is required
for infection — you can beat it.”
Bacteriophage development and
interactions with bacterial hosts.
“Viruses make bacteria’s life
very difficult, even miserable.
So bacteria need to find ways to
outdo the viruses. It is a never
ending arms race. Understanding
it can have wide implications for
containing diseases caused by
bacteria.”
Structure-activity analysis of
peptide antibiotics. “In real life,
bacteria do not live in pure cul-tures.
They cohabitate and “talk”
to each other using chemical
signals. Antibiotics is something
that bacteria “invented” as a
form of communication eons
before us humans thought about
using it as medicine. We study
how bacteria produce antibiotics
and how sensitive bacteria die in
the presence of antibiotics or find
ways to evade them and survive.”
Studies of bacterial diversity in
extreme environments: “We go
out to places like Antarctica or
Kamchatka’s hot springs to find
new phages and bacteria and
then study them in the lab and
determine how they are distrib-uted
around the world.”
IMAGE COURTESY OF ROBERT HEINZEN, ELIZABETH FISCHER AND ANITA MORA, NATIONAL INSTITUTE
OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

28
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Keith Stevenson
for Electrochemical Energy Storage
“In Russia, much like
in the USA, people want to
press their cars’ accelerator
and get a response”, argues
Keith Stevenson, “we need to
deliver this energy but lessen
our dependence on oil.”

29
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Professor Stevenson’s research in-terests
are aimed at elucidating and
controlling chemistry at solid/liquid
interfaces vital to many emerging
energy storage and conversion
technologies.
Among his hobbies are fly-fishing (“people
tell me Russian rivers are great for that”),
and woodworking (“I built a kitchen table and
chairs, headboard and dresser when I was a
graduate student”). When he strolled around
the estate of Catherine the Great, he found
the old, lush trees “simply amazing”.
He likes to
barbeque (BBQ)
and plans on
teaching the
locals the
nuances of this
culture.
“There is a way to do it: Store en-ergy
in batteries, then utilize it,
just like in laptop and cellphone
batteries. But the scale is going to
be much larger. Immense even.”
Stevenson, who had spent 14 years
at the University of Texas, at Austin,
US, before recently moving to Mos-cow,
heads the Electrochemical En-ergy
Storage CREI (one of 15 Skoltech
Centers for Research Education and
Innovation). “We will test new mate-rials
in the context of a major global
challenge”, he pledges. “We want to
drop the cost of batteries for cars by
a factor of ten to a hundred. The price
reduction can amount to a third of
the total cost of the vehicle. Electric
cars are not only for rich people, they
have to be commercially viable for
everyone in Russia and the world.
“Such research has environ-mental,
social and commercial
implications. We can change the
way people live. Think of quiet
and efficient cars. Think even of
self-driving cars and single oc-cupancy
autonomous vehicles…”
the level headed research-er
allows a dash of enthusiasm
to infiltrate his voice.
“World experts are trying to de-crease
batteries’ weight and in-crease
energy and power density.
These are some of the projects that
involve rechargeable metal air bat-teries
which utilize oxygen directly
from the air or cheap chemicals like
sulfur. This research is the focus of
this generously funded CREI and its
partners like MIT, Moscow State Uni-versity,
and other top universities.
As for Skoltech, Stevenson thinks
that “the really interesting element is
the integration of education and re-search
into solving real world prob-lems.
A lot of the funding agencies
would like to see inspired research,
which generates technology that
contributes to GDP. The key is to
break out of traditional ‘esoteric’ dis-tinctions,
so that scientists and stu-dents
have freedom to explore and
innovate in a broader sense.
“If Russia wants to diversify from
oil and gas and develop new invest-ment
opportunities, it needs people
who can move between institutions
and disciplines, start their own
businesses and generate innovative
new ideas.”
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Keith-Stevenson
“We also want to dramatically
advance grid-level energy
use through load-leveling and
power-shaping. We need to
create energy buffers to increase
the efficient use of alternative
energy sources, such as solar,
wind and water. Sometimes
these exist in abundance in
nature, sometimes they are just
not available. The center will
help solve this problem.”
SKOLTECH
CENTER FOR
ELECTROCHEM-ICAL
ENERGY
STORAGE AIMS TO
Develop and
demonstrate materials,
devices and systems
that will provide the
basis for innovative
opportunities for energy
storage technologies
Conduct research into
advanced metal-ion and
rechargeable metal-air
battery
Develop fuel and
Electrolysis Cells
PHOTO COURTESY ARGONNE NATIONAL LABORATORY, FLICKR
Lithium-ion battery testing

30
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Before specializing in
He is an avid
physics Anatoly worked
Alpine skier.
as a TV journalist.
Anatoly enjoys Boston but loves
Moscow because: “It is such a
vibrant cosmopolitan city.”
ANATOLY
DYMARSKY’S
WORK
FOCUSES ON
Strongly coupled
systems, when the
constituent parts of
a complex system
cannot be considered
in isolation. Examples
range from interacting
elementary particles to
power grid.
Anatoly Dymarsky
Assistant Professor
Anatoly Dymarsky’s resume
reads like a list of the best uni-versities
in the English-speaking
world: a Ph.D. from Princeton,
research positions at Stanford
and the University of Cambridge,
and a year as a visiting professor
at MIT. “Skoltech faculty visit MIT
to strengthen their professional
skills in the areas most needed,”
he says “My experience was mainly
academic and I had little exposure
to entrepreneurship. As MIT is
well-known for its entrepreneurial
ecosystem, this is a chance for me
to gain invaluable experience.”
So after working and research-ing
in centuries-old top institutions
in America and the UK, why join
Skoltech, a young, private Russian
university?
“I was looking for a place with-out
interdisciplinary boundaries,
where cross-cutting research
is encouraged. I’m a theoretical
physicist. But I am also interested
in areas that are not considered
part of physics, like engineering or
quantitative biology. I didn’t want to
make a choice.”
Skoltech doesn’t have academic
divisions or departments. There
are no restrictions when it comes
to research. So I’m working with
a computer scientist now applying
machine learning to improve con-trol
of electric power systems.”
FOR MORE INFO,
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Faculty/Anatoly-Dymarsky
“As a professor, my ultimate goal is to
provide Skoltech students with knowl-edge
that will enable them to thrive
in the most competitive environments
around the world. The point here is
not to follow in someone’s footsteps.
We have to create our own way.”
IMAGE COURTESY OF VITALY SMOLIGIN

31
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
ALESSANDRO
GOLKAR’S WORK
FOCUSES ON
Development of systems
engineering tools and
methodologies for ar-chitecting
large
engineering systems
Applications for robotic
space exploration, hu-man
spaceflight, satel-lite
systems and energy
infrastructures.
Hardware development
of small satellites for
space exploration and
terrestrial applications
Alessandro Golkar
Assistant Professor
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 A licensed pilot, he flies
First non-managerial
a plane regularly. Next
faculty member
target: helicopter.
at Skoltech.
Loves the film “Gravity” but couldn’t stand
watching Sandra Bullock spacewalking
with the help of a fire extinguisher.
When it comes to groundbreaking
work, Alessandro Golkar can liter-ally
see the future. From his office
window, the Italian researcher
gazes at a vast field where tractors
and builders buzz around an oval
construction site, reminiscent of a
mother spaceship. It is Skoltech’s
new campus.
“Building a university from
scratch, that’s probably something
you get to do only once in your life”,
he says, his fingers tracing an archi-tectural
plan laid out on his table. “I
helped design my new lab and of-fice.
Pretty cool and exciting.”
But the budding buildings are not
the only reason professor Golkar,
who came to Skoltech from MIT’s
aerospace program, feels like a pio-neer.
“My students and I are working
on a revolution in space”, he smiles,
“We are studying how to federate
satellites to make them share un-used
resources and trade them,
like in a smart grid. The goal is to
achieve more with less.”
“They say that the people who at-tend
the first meeting, draw the ini-tial
plans, are always the ones who
shape the future. Now I’m one of
those people.”
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Alessandro-Golkar
“We focus in our lab on concurrent
engineering projects. Unlike
traditional workgroups in which
different teams work separately,
developers and designers work
together on satellite parts,
spaceships or robots. The idea is
to take complex multidisciplinary
projects and create new concepts
and new markets.”
IMAGE COURTESY OF ESA

32
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
PAULETTE BROWN
VICTOR
LEMPITSKY’S
WORK
FOCUSES ON
Computer vision:
Designing computer
systems that extract,
organize, and quantify
information contained in
images of various types
and origin
Visual recognition:
Developing robust
and flexible machine
learning and optimiza-tion
techniques able to
handle and adapt to the
diversity of image data
in the modern world
Biomedical image
analysis
Victor Lempitsky
Assistant Professor
As head of Skoltech’s computer vi-sion
group, Lempitsky deals with a
tantalizing paradox: he must think
beyond the box — in order to make
the box smarter. Or not so dumb,
as he sees it.
“Computers find it very difficult to
extract information from the visual
world, while human brains are ex-cellent
at that. If, for example, you
want to know how many people
cross a street a day, you could sit
there and count. You’d probably do
it perfectly. But it is so boring!” he
smiles, “A computer that ‘sees’ is
likely to miscalculate the number of
people in a crowd by, say, 20%, but
for most practical applications this
can be just fine. One of my goals is to
help computers perform the boring
tasks that humans are so good at.”
He then picks up a smartphone
from his desk and flips it in his hand.
“Smartphones are great tools for con-necting
the visual world with knowl-edge
from the internet. They can be
good at finding matches and the next
challenge is to make them better at
finding similarities. In this way, the
computers can become good not only
at recognizing buildings but also at
telling apart species of dogs and flow-ers.
Currently the game is about that.”
“Another big challenge — and the
one that I find really interesting — is to
derive information from images that
are not familiar to the human brain.
Think for example of 3d images such
as those produced by MRI scanners
or some modern microscopes. That’s
one place where computer vision
might outperform the human brain,”
he pauses, “even as of now, it is al-ready
very helpful.”
So how close are we to the Ter-minator
movie-like world, where
robots are able to see?
“Not very close. Although the
rate of the progress starts scaring
me at times,” he admits. ”The scar-iest
bit was when a friend of mine
showed me an app that took photos
and actually said what they were.
The accuracy was impeccable and
even complex and uncommon ob-jects
were recognized in a matter
of seconds. It looked as if comput-er
vision was finally solved. I was
scared, although I must confess,
not of the Terminator but of the fact
that I was out of job. Fortunately
for me and my colleagues, the app
description that we looked up on
the Internet said that the pictures
were sent to the Philippines, where
some guys just typed in what they
saw in the photos. It will still take a
big effort to make a similar app that
does not fake computer vision.”
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 Victor leads
He has worked as a researcher at Russia’s Internet
Skoltech’s
search giant Yandex, the University of Oxford, and with Mi-crosoft
Computer
in Cambridge. He chose Skoltech because of “the
Vision Group.
independence I have here, and the chance to collaborate
with biologists and researchers from other disciplines”.
When this amiable researcher steps onto the
soccer field, he is transformed into an unabash-edly
goal-oriented player. Some colleagues and
students seem to be in awe of his predatory
scoring instinct. Others just high-five him.
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Victor-Lempitsky

33
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Professor Alexander Ustinov
Associate Director,
Skoltech Center for Energy Systems
ALEXANDER
USTINOV’S WORK
FOCUSES ON
Creation of novel
technologies related to
Smart Grid
Building a state-of-the-
art investigation
laboratory at the Energy
Systems CREI
Establishing research
on enhanced heat and
mass transfer in boiling,
condensation, free
and forced convection,
thermal management
of power equipment and
exhaust gas after treat-ment
technologies
“When I started my own company
in Germany, I have had an opportu-nity
to work on cutting-edge ener-gy
projects for companies like Sie-mens”,
says Alexander Ustinov, the
Associate Director of the Skoltech
Center for Energy Systems, “but
after 12 years in Western Europe
I decided to go back to Russia.
Fascinating processes take place
here, where I have my roots.”
“Skoltech offered things I could not
find in other places. It breaks new
ground and grows within a unique
ecosystem”, he explains, “there’s the
Skolkovo Foundation that supports
international R&D and local start-ups.
You have the Technopark. More-over,
Skoltech is a very international
place, where you enjoy learning from
people with various backgrounds.
Here interdisciplinarity and synergy
are genuine parts of the work.”
“We’re already launching at the
Energy Systems CREI a highly inno-vative
project in collaboration with
the Composites center (ASPEM), to
develop composite power towers.”
Ustinov participated in the cre-ation
of several companies, which
brought novel products and technol-ogies
to the European and interna-tional
market. “When you’re still at
school and start your own venture,
you can’t tell whether you’ll make it
or not”, he reminisces. “It’s tough.
But when a student builds a startup
that’s really connected to industry, it
is a genuine breakthrough. The sec-ond
you invent something and you
bring it to market and commercial-ize,
then a whole new set of knowl-edge
and skills is created. Skoltech
gives that opportunity to students
and faculty, and from them it will be
transferred to Russia as a whole.
“Of course there are possibilities in
other countries. But when you take a
close look at the landscape in West-ern
Europe, for example, you some-times
see half empty technoparks
where a handful of startups develop
mobile apps. It’s nice to have an iP-hone
and an Android app. But what
the economy really needs is devel-opment
that’s related to industry. We
need to actually generate revenue.”
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 He is the founder of Advanced Energy Technolo-gies,
a German-based company, providing R&D and
engineering services, with expertise in building of
experimental installations, development of measuring
techniques, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simu-lations
and modeling of processes of heat and mass
transfer for the automobile and energy branches.
Alexander is a passionate stamp
collector. “It’s a very old fashioned
Russian engineers’ hobby. Keeping an
aquarium is another classic pastime.
I used to do both, but since I don’t have
time for fish, I’m left only with the
stamps”.
Loves to travel and
brings home a teacup
from every trip. “Yester-day
I drank coffee from
Washington, but today I
will be sipping tea from
the Beijing cup”.
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Alexander-Ustinov
IMAGE COURTESY OF UNITED NATIONS PHOTO, FLICKR

34
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
KELVIN
WILLOUGHBY’S
WORK
FOCUSES ON
Technology-induced
changes on the nature of
work and organizations
The role of entrepre-neurship
in employment
generation and economy
Competitiveness of
small entrepreneurial
firms
Technology entre-preneurship
and
intellectual property
management (as an area
different from the intel-lectual
property law).
Kelvin Willoughby
Professor
“When I first told colleagues that
I’m moving to Russia to work on In-tellectual
Property management,
they said I must be joking. But I was
very serious — and still am”, Kel-vin
Willoughby says in an American
drawl laced with an Australian lilt.
The business professor and ex-pert
on technology-based entre-preneurship
speaks softly and to
the point: “Russian enterprises, and
that includes small startups, must
be able to quickly operate interna-tionally
in order to survive and flour-ish.
They need to navigate the pit-falls
and master the characteristics
of the global scene. This is where I
come in. My aim is to provide aca-demic
leadership on IP’s role in tech
management as a vehicle to com-mercialize
and develop assets.”
The affable Australian turned
American moved to Moscow in
summer 2014 to become the first
full professor at the Skoltech
Center for Entrepreneurship and
Innovation (CEI).
His research is recorded in 4
monographs, numerous scholar-ly
publications, technical mono-graphs,
industry and government
reports; and he has won govern-mental,
academic and industry
grants in Hong Kong, Thailand, the
USA, Germany and Australia. “I am
optimistic about what can be done
here”, a smile looms on his face,
“The CEI will work with Ph.D. and
Masters students, as well as with
fellow faculty, to organize their
thinking and activities towards suc-cessful
commercialization.”
“Moreover, Skoltech can take a
leadership role in producing a ro-bust
annual survey and a database
of the state of tech entrepreneur-ship
in Russia. I’d like to learn how
it changes over time, what kind of
strategic support it might need.
We will also conduct case studies
of tech companies in the BRICS
countries and learn how they tack-le
similar problems. I don’t want to
copy paste American textbooks and
teach those here. The idea is to cre-ate
a fresh knowledge base to help
Russian tech projects flourish.”
3 THINGS YOU NEED
TO KNOW ABOUT HIM
1 2 3 “Cooking and eating and drinking
wine while talking with friends is
one of the most important things
in my life. I lived in many coun-tries
and always found that food
is a good way of getting insights
into society.”
Willoughby confesses his
love of “modern dance
cities like New York, where
I used to live, and Moscow,
where I reside now. Ballet
and modern dance are both
my passions”.
He likes walking around old Moscow “to
get a feeling for the ebb and flow of the
city. Moscow has an efficient public trans-port
system, especially the metro. But the
fun part is to stroll down a small street,
sit in a café or discover a museum.”
FOR MORE INFO,
PUBLICATIONS
AND AWARDS
Faculty/Kelvin-Willoughby
IMAGE COURTESY OF SHAPEWAYS, FLICKR

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
35
AUGUST 2014
Partnership with MIT
“You know, I’ve just returned from MIT…” Queuing at the Skoltech caf-eteria,
you would probably notice the countless references to MIT by
small — and big — talkers.
5 THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW
ABOUT THE SKOLTECH MIT PARTNERSHIP
1 2 3 4 5 Skoltech faculty visit MIT
and gain hands-on expe-rience
in key areas such
as patent registration,
bootstrapping a start-up
business and securing
funding for research.
MIT scholars and
researchers, including
Nobel laureates and
leading scientists, make
frequent journeys from
Cambridge to Moscow.
Some of them decide to
stay and become part of
the Skoltech faculty.
Skoltech Masters students on their
final year of studies can apply for the
Skoltech-MIT FLEX program and
attend one semester at MIT. Once
they are in Cambridge, students
either take the coursework they
need in order to complement and
complete their MS degree paths,
or do a research/innovation project
with an MIT research advisor.
The MIT Russia Program
matches MIT students
with paid industrial intern-ships
and research op-portunities
in Russia. Par-ticipating
students come
from diverse backgrounds
including engineering,
architecture, science, and
management.
MIT has a historical con-nection
to Russia: it was
partially modeled on
the “Russian School” of
engineering education,
founded at the Moscow
State Technical Univer-sity
in 1830, thirty years
before MIT itself opened
its doors for students.
On October 26, 2011, the newly
created Skoltech signed a trilater-al
agreement with the Massachu-setts
Institute of Technology (MIT)
and the Skolkovo Foundation,
and launched an invaluable part-nership
whose aim is to build ca-pacity
in education, research and
entrepreneurship programs at
Skoltech. The agreement has been
extended to a period of four years.
The result is the MIT Skoltech
Initiative, which serves as a portal
connecting the two scientific com-munities.
MIT acts as an advisor to
Skoltech on programs, structure,
and curriculum, while research-ers
at both institutes benefit from
new opportunities for intellectual
exchange, network building and
shared research.
The flurry of activity is not only
about here and now. The focus and
purpose lies ahead, beyond the in-itial
agreement. Leadership from
both sides envision a core strategic
partnership dedicated to further
building and enhancing capacity at
Skoltech, and to advancing Russian
participation in the global innova-tion
community.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
http://web.mit.edu/sktech/ http://www.skoltech.ru/en/about/mit/
Nobel laureates Shinya
Yamanaka (right) and Phillip
Sharp at the Skoltech —
MIT conference ‘Towards
Therapies of the Future’

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
36
AUGUST 2014
Careers and Positions
Being a unique university is an exciting challenge. Accordingly, Skoltech is
recruiting talent in science and technology.
Professor Natalia Berloff,
Dean of Faculty (2nd from
left) and professor Dmitri
Kharzeev (2nd from right)
announce the winner of the
2014 Science Drive initiative
at Startup Village
The Russian government has long
seen it as a priority to draw Rus-sian
scientists back from abroad.
But Skoltech has not only reached
out to the RUSSIAN-SPEAKING DIASPORA
in order to reverse the brain drain.
It also serves as a portal and ac-tively
works to provide LEADING PRO-FESSORS
AND SCIENTISTS FROM AROUND
THE WORLD with unique research
opportunities.
We seek candidates in TENURED
and TENURE-TRACK POSITIONS. Skoltech
has a tenure and promotion system
modeled on US practice, with inter-national
peer review and three reg-ular
professorship levels: Assistant,
Associate, and Full. There are also
positions of Professor of the Prac-tice,
Visiting Professor, and Adjunct
Professor.
We offer opportunities for both
faculty and post docs in and across
FIVE TECHNICAL FOCUS TRACKS, as well
as in CROSS-CUTTING AREAS and in INNO-VATION
AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP.
SINCE OUR TOP PRIORITY IS TO GROW
A COMMUNITY OF BRIGHT AND DRIVEN
RESEARCHERS WE ARE OPEN TO
APPLICATIONS FROM STRONG
CANDIDATES IN ALL AREAS OF SCIENCE
AND TECHNOLOGY RELATED TO OUR
PRIORITY THEMES, LISTED BELOW
INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (PRIORITY AREAS):
machine learning and artificial intelligence, systems and
networks, big data-related areas, electronic materials and
devices, quantum technology, photonics
BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (PRIORITY AREAS):
computational and systems biology, immunology and
infectious disease, gene- and nano-medicine, regenerative
medicine, neuroscience, translational medicine
ENERGY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (PRIORITY AREAS): hy-drocarbon
fuel production and transportation, hydrocarbon
processing, electric power systems generation and distri-bution,
electrical energy storage, energy efficient systems,
energy and the environment
SPACE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (PRIORITY AREAS): sup-porting
humans in long term space exploration, design and
construction of small satellites, utilization of space data for
communications, positioning, and earth system information
collection, lunar and planetary engineering and science,
safety engineering, propulsion
NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (PRIORITY AREAS):
nuclear energy safety, materials for extreme environments,
non-energy applications of nuclear and radiation technolo-gies,
human and biological radiation effects
CROSS-CUTTING AREAS: advanced materials (in particular,
composite materials), computational and data-intensive
science and engineering, human factors engineering
ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION (including commer-cialization,
product design/development, manufacturing,
large scale systems)
FOR ADDITIONAL DETAILS, PLEASE SEE THE PAGES DEDICATED TO LISTINGS, FACULTY AND POSTDOCS
Positions/Listings http://sktech-search.mit.edu/ http://sktech-postdoc.mit.edu/

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
37
AUGUST 2014
Funding
Each faculty member receives a generous start-up package from
Skoltech, designed to cover research costs for the first three years.
It includes funds for supporting research personnel as well as funds
for research-related travel, equipment, consumables and supplies.
The number and amount depend
on the need, type of research (the-oretical,
computational, or experi-mental)
and rank of appointment.
The package is INTERNATIONALLY COM-PETITIVE.
In addition, Skoltech grants FUR-THER
FUNDING on a competitive basis
through CREIs. CREIs also provide
access to CENTRALIZED FACILITIES.
Salaries at Skoltech are INTER-NATIONALLY
COMPETITIVE and bench-marked
with US universities. They
are adjusted for the cost of living in
Moscow.
http://www.skoltech.ru/
faculty
4 THINGS YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW
ABOUT OUR POSITIONS
2 3 4 Faculty lead
the develop-ment
of a new
curriculum
and innova-tive
research
structure.
Teaching and
research are
carried out in
the English
language.
We know what it means
to take a leap of faith.
We offer internationally
competitive salaries and
benefits and substantial
funding opportunities.
Skoltech is com-mitted
to diversity
and equality, and all
are invited to apply
without regard for
gender, race or
national origin.
1

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
38
AUGUST 2014
Students and Education
You are probably already aware that Skoltech is an up and coming in-ternational
technological and science university, where research and
innovation are combined, the only one of its kind in a vast area of the
world. But did you also know:
45% 27% 80% 65%
SPAIN
NIGERIA
CANADA
UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA
$100K raised by
MSc students for
four hackathons —
several startups and
projects emerged
from this work
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
KAZAKHSTAN
INDIA
UKRAINE
ITALY TURKEY
BANGLADESH
VIET NAM
SERBIA
AZERBAIJAN
PAKISTAN
LATVIA
BELARUS
ARMENIA
THAILAND
№1 AID AND SUPPORT
PACKAGE FOR GRADUATE
STUDENTS IN RUSSIA.
SKOLTECH DELIVERS TECHNO-LOGICAL
AND SCIENCE
EDUCATION FREE OF TUITION
FEES, SUPPORTS STUDENTS
WITH A MONTHLY STIPEND,
PROVIDES AN ALLOWANCE FOR
RENT AND CHIPS IN ON TRAVEL
EXPENSES TO PROFESSIONAL
CONFERENCES 19 countries of origin:
Armenia, Austria,
Azerbaijan, Bangladesh,
Belarus, Canada, India,
Italy, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Spain,
Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine,
United States,
Vietnam — and Russia
45% of Skoltech
students are ac-tively
involved in a
startup company
or project
27% of MSc
students have
spent one
academic year at
MIT, Skoltech’s
leading partner
university.
80% of Skoltech MSc and
PhD students have spent
at least one month at MIT,
mostly under the FLEX
program.
WE ALSO COLLABORATE WITH HKUST
(HONG KONG); MIPT IN RUSSIA; AND
ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE
DE LAUSANNE (SWITZERLAND).
TOP 10 Skoltech students were
finalists at international
competitions such as the
CleanTech Challenge
and MIT’s 100k Competition
5 CROSSCUTTING
PH.D. AND M.SC.
PROGRAMS
IN IT, ENERGY,
SPACE, BIOMED,
AND PRODUCT
REALIZATION
35%
35% of all
Masters and
Ph.D. students
are women
50+ Open doors days, hackathons,
innovation workshops,
industry immersion programs
and internships, selection
weekends, guest seminars,
and sports events in Skoltech,
across Russia
and overseas each year.
15 centers for Research, Education
and Innovation (CREIs)* where
Ph.D. and MSc students can
conduct research, study and
work with leading international
scientists and Nobel laureates
* the Skoltech CREIs are a work in progress project.
Six CREIs have been established by August 2014.

39
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Students and Education
WANT TO WATCH SOME VIDEOS ABOUT STUDENTS’ LIFE AND INDUSTRY IMMERSION?
WANT TO APPLY?
CHECK OUT THIS LINK
APPLY.SKOLTECH.RU
OR SEND US AN EMAIL AT
ADMISSIONS@SKOLTECH.RU
FEEL LIKE HEARING MORE ABOUT
OUR CROSSCUTTING TRACKS,
EDUCATIONAL MODULES
AND DEGREES?
FOLLOW THIS LINK
SKOLTECH.RU/EDUCATION
CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE COMMUNITIES AT FACEBOOK, VKONTAKTE, INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER
IN ENGLISH AND RUSSIAN OR VISIT OUR WEBSITE
www.facebook.com/
Skoltech vk.com/skoltech
instagram.com/
skoltech
twitter.com/
Skoltech www.skoltech.ru/en
www.youtube.com/
watch?v=wI8VidG3kWA
www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4MOElTbP9YE
Design and build electrical cir-cuits
in a few minutes. Team up
with a group of total strangers
to turn a pile of flimsy boxes into
a seriously high tower. These are
among the challenges that dozens
of prospective Skoltech students
have to tackle during Selection
Weekend - a 72-hour marathon
of exams, challenges, interviews
and modules — which is the final
stage in the students’ admission
and selection process. For those
who successfully convince the se-lection
committee that they have
the skills, knowledge and spirit to
become innovators, it is all worth-while.
On the other end of Selec-tion
Weekend, they are admitted to
Skoltech as new students.
The admission and selection pro-cess
at Skoltech was developed in
collaboration with MIT faculty. It
involves more than submitting an
application, being interviewed by
faculty, or taking math and English
exams. It focuses not only on what
applicants already know — but on
what they can achieve in the future.
It is our way of seeking out the re-alistic
dreamers, the next stars of
science and tech.
Skoltech aims to attract, support
and nourish an outstanding cadre
of students who have the capaci-ty
to become agents of knowledge
exchange, innovators, company
founders, and leaders who will
have impact on Russia and around
the world. Almost half of current
Skoltech students already have
started their own company or tech
project. The goal is to enroll new
students who will follow the exam-ple
of these trailblazers.
Graduate students who join
Skoltech attend their first course for
the academic year in August. Called
Innovation Workshop, it challenges
students to find their inner entrepre-neurs,
but also provides the tools to
do so. At the beginning, students go
through Quick Success workshops,
where they are challenged - and
have some fun. The newly admit-ted
grads hack electric bicycles,
construct Lego made robotic arms,
design composite materials, build
bridges made of spaghetti, and ana-lyze
Cameron Diaz’s face at a com-puter
vision workshop.
At the end of the workshop the
students are ready to present their
final projects and deal with innova-tion
challenges in the real world.
They are also ready to begin their
multidisciplinary technological and
science education in IT, Energy,
Space, Biomedicine or Manufac-turing.
There are no compulsory
courses at Skoltech. But students
are supported in their active pursuit
of their goals. They tackle challeng-es,
develop solutions, study inde-pendently
and work in teams.
When students begin their peri-od
with Skoltech, they are ready to
speak English with their friends and
colleagues, a fifth of whom comes
from abroad. They are ready to
study in a Russian university and ed-ucation
follows international stand-ards
such as the CDIO framework
and the EU’s Bologna process. And
most of all students are ready to
grow along with a unique institution
— the only one of its kind in a vast
part of the world.
Are you ready?

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
40
AUGUST 2014
Skoltech Milestones
It might be true that even the longest road begins with the smallest
step. Yet Skoltech has already covered quite a distance since 2009,
when Russia announced its plans to create a contemporary technical
center that will incorporate research, education and innovation.
Here are some of the milestones in Skoltech’s journey so far:
2011
A P R I L 2 5
Announcement of plans to found
Skoltech
O C T O B E R 2 6
A newly created Skoltech signs
partnership agreement with the
Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy
(MIT)
D E CEMB E R 19
Skoltech launches campaign to
raise $2 billion for endowment
2012
Beginning of 2012 First faculty hired
and pilot group of M.Sc. students
selected
J A NU A R Y
The Center for Entrepreneurship
and Innovation (CEI) announces its
Innovation Support Program
J U LY 9
The Skoltech Board of Trustees ap-proves
the first three CREIs — Cen-ters
for Research, Education and
Innovation: Stem Cell, Infectious
Diseases and Functional Genomics,
and Energy Storage
A U G U S T 9
President Edward Crawley rings a
bell and launches Skoltech’s first
course, the Innovation Workshop
S E P TEMB E R
M.Sc. students travel to four
different international universities
for one year abroad and begin
programs in Energy Science and IT
(Information Technology)
O C T O B E R 2 8
M.Sc. students Vahe Taamazyan
and Nikita Rodichenko win 1st
place at the TAPPED Hackathon in
Boston, Massachusetts
NO V EMB E R 2
Skoltech signs a cooperation agree-ment
in the fields of education,
science and technological devel-opment
with major international
corporations operating in Russia,
including Intel
2013
2013 Skoltech researchers begin to
submit and publish in journals and
Top-tier conferences.
F E B R U A R Y
M.Sc. student Anastasia Uryasheva
gains Skolkovo Resident status for
her start-up company Sadko Mobile
A P R I L 8
Skoltech President Edward Crawley
signs a three-sided agreement to
create the first CREI — the Center
for Stem Cell Research. The Vavilov
Institute of General Genetics, Rus-sia
and University Medical Centre
Groningen, the Netherlands, joined
Skoltech as partners.
MAY
Skoltech students reach the 10
finalists at MIT’s 100k Competition
with an application for simplifying
satellite photography.
MAY 2 8
Skoltech participates in Startup
Village events, organizing seminars
and supporting start-up companies
J U N E
Skoltech launches a double degree
program along with the Moscow
Institute of Physics and Technology
(Phystech)
J UNE 2 0
Skoltech signs a five-year collabo-ration
agreement with St Peters-burg
State University (SPbU).
J U LY 15
Skoltech appoints Prof Victor Kote-lianski
as its first CREI Director
S E P TEMB E R 5
The Skoltech Colloquium kicked off
its first seminar
D E CEMB E R 3 1
Skoltech faculty numbers
28 permanent members.
2014
A P R I L
Science Drive a program to select
promising Russian physicists that
will work in Manchester, UK under
the guidance of Noble laureate
Andre Geim.
MAY 2 7 -2 8
International biomed conference
attended by Nobel laureates in
Medicine Philip A. Sharp and Shinya
Yamanaka
A U G U S T 1 5
Skoltech has appointed directors of
6 CREIs. Skoltech faculty numbers
38 permanent members.
By 2020
By 2020, Skoltech plans to have
hired 200 professors, attained a
class size of 1,200 M.Sc. and Ph.D.
students and selected 440 postdocs
to conduct research in its 15 Cen-ters
for Research, Education and
Innovation (CREIs)
Nobel laureate Sidney
Altman after giving
a Skoltech seminar
on antibiotics, May 2014

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
41
AUGUST 2014
IMAGE COURTESY OF PAVEL KAZACHKOV, FLICKR
Life in Moscow
LOOK AROUND YOU. Moscow is home
to 15 million people. See how they
rush on and off rumbling trains,
as they arrive at underground
stations every 90 seconds.
LOOK UP. The subway station’s
vaulted ceilings are covered with
glorious murals and mosaics. A
first ‘wow’ or ‘whoa’ might escape
your mouth. As you climb up from
the underground and emerge onto
the street, historical buildings and
modern skyscrapers tower above
the stream of people. The energy
is almost palpable.
TAKE A LOOK AT CULTURE. Moscow is a
cultural powerhouse, celebrat-ing
centuries of creativity. Opera
houses showcase visceral bari-tones.
Ballet troupes fete ethereal
ballerinas. Theaters provide En-glish
subtitles. It’s a city where you
marvel at a thousand years’ old
medieval icon, a hundred years old
modern painting or a 20 years old
bartender mixing vodka with any
drinkable liquid imaginable — and
some that aren’t.
MOM, DAD, LOOK AT THAT… Moscow is a
city where international kinder-gartens,
schools and universi-ties
offer programs in dozens of
languages; where street signs and
bus stations are being dressed
up with updated information in
English; where families devoted
to shopping roam the giant malls,
wide parks and trendy back alleys,
and the faithful congregate in
churches, mosques, synagogues
and shrines.
LOOKS LIKE FUN. Restaurants offer
anything from a kids menu,
through a salad called “herring
under a fur coat” to priceless
delicacies. It’s where ice-skating,
sun-bathing, snowboarding and
sauna-soaking are available 24/7.
Moscow even has beaches, replete
with golden sand and red-white
recliners. And on an island in the
Moskva river, the “Red October”
arts & entertainment complex
paints the city in new, hip colors
LOOK FORWARD. Moscow has always
been a cosmopolitan city. Now it’s
becoming an increasingly modern
metropolis. People on the go need
constant connectivity — and the
city provides it. Free Wi-Fi is avail-able
almost everywhere, even on
underground trains. A budding
startup scene is complemented
by a mature market and a growing
demand for researchers and
managers, IT experts and energy
specialists. New office buildings,
techno parks, residential areas
and green public spaces spring
up. The rush is on, day in day out.
CHECK OUT
THE NUMBERS
Moscow is home to a
HALF A MILLION English
speakers who are expats
Moscow hosts 40 THOU-SAND
LICENSED TAXIS —
as many as New York
6 MILLION tourists visit
the city every year
More than 30 INTER-NATIONAL
SCHOOLS
and kindergartens are
available for children
Known as one of the
greenest capitals, the
city has over
100 PARKS, GARDENS,
AND SQUARES
1 $USD (35 RUBLES)
is the average price of a
subway ticket
It takes HALF AN HOUR
to reach Sheremetyevo
airport with the aero-ex-press
train

FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
42
AUGUST 2014
Russian: Say it по-русски
Legend has it that Catherine the Great (a German princess before she
became Russian empress) managed to write the humble Russian word
щи, meaning cabbage soup, with eight spelling mistakes: schtschi.
Eight wrong letters in a two-letter-word. Not bad for a Tsaritsa.
If you feel overwhelmed by this beautiful, profound and complex
language, we’re here to give you a push up the linguistic hill.
Skoltech’s working language is
English, so you can always re-vert
to “howdy” and “wassup”.
But wouldn’t you like to start
your day with a thick, healthy
Здравствуйте (Zdrastvooyte)?
That means “hello”.
Another way to
greet people is by
saying Привет!
(Preevyet) which
means ‘Hi!’ Better
use that with peo-ple
you know or
are friends with.
Better be able to say
‘thank you’ (Spaseeba),
‘please’ (Pozhaluysta)
and the occasional
Eezveeneete (Sorry!) or
Prasteete (Excuse me). Don’t go! But
It’s all in a name, right?
So Meenya zavoot
equals “My name is...”
if you do, then
Da sveedaneeya
means good-bye
and paka is a
friendly bye-bye.
5 very useful expressions
and words to know “Po-Russkie”:
DENNIS JARVIS, FLICKR

43
FACULT Y PROSPECTUS
AUGUST 2014
Russian: Say it по-русски
4 BITS OF LANGUAGE
TRIVIA YOU CAN SHOW
OFF WITH
(COURTESY BBC
LANGUAGES)
About 10% of Russian words are
internationalisms and bear a re-semblance
to English words, eg.
ПРОБЛЕМА — problem, КОФЕ —
coffee, or КАФЕ — café.
The main source of loan words
for modern Russian is English
so don’t be surprised if you see
words such as ФЛЭШ-КАРТА —
flash card,
or ХАКЕР —hacker.
There are plenty of loan words
from Italian, French or German.
Some of those made their way
into the Russian language in the
18th and 19th centuries, such
as the word ПАРИКМАХЕРСКАЯ
(parikmacherskaya) — hair
salon, from the German word for
wig maker.
Can you read this?
«ЛЮБОВНЫЕ ПИСЬМА НУЖНО
ЖЕЧЬ ВСЕНЕПРЕМЕННО.
ИЗ ПРОШЛОГО ПОЛУЧАЕТСЯ
БЛАГОРОДНОЕ ТОПЛИВО.»
It translates as ‘Love letters have
to be burned. The past provides
the noblest fuel’. If the acclaimed
Vladimir Nabokov, who acknowl-edged
that Russian wasn’t his
first language, could pull off such
stylish prose — there is always
hope for the non-native speaker.
WANT TO TELL SOMEONE THAT YOU LOVE THEM IN RUSSIAN? FEEL LIKE LEARNING THIS COMPLEX AND RICH LANGUAGE?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJMVHL-25H8
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/shedding-light-
on-moscows-russian-language-schools/479624.html
MAGALIE L’ABBE, FLICKR NICK SHERMAN, FLICKR

ABOUT SKOLTECH VISIT
WEB www.skoltech.ru
TWITTER @Skoltech
@skoltech_ru
FACEBOOK Skoltech
VKONTAKTE Skoltech

Skoltech faculty prospectus August 2014

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