Read the full October newsletter here.

In the past two months, it has been fascinating following our first 20 students, getting to know them personally, watching them develop throughout the SkTech/MIT Innovation Workshop, and sending them off on their first year.

I especially want to highlight the stellar work by the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI), which collaborated with our partners at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to produce a unique Innovation Workshop. In August, the students tamed a robot and demonstrated to themselves that the first step to technology innovation is prototyping the entire innovation. I’m looking forward to seeing it grow over the next year.

In the month of September, we have witnessed our senior leadership and capabilities vastly expand. Ed Seidel has begun developing the Research and Innovation program, Mats Hanson has joined as Dean of Education, and Lionel Ponsard will lead our institutional development as Executive Vice President. They will be key in realizing the university’s objectives and mission.

We are also excited to welcome our first four faculty members, Yuri Shprits, Victor Lempitsky, Julia Stoyanovich and Alessandro Golkar, each with specialties in Space Physics, Computer Vision, Data and Knowledge Management, and Astronautical Engineering, respectively. They will become guiding forces in the academic lives of our students.

Looking ahead, we are reaching out to universities throughout Russia and the world for the next class of engineering entrepreneurs. After viewing the first class excel at the Innovation Workshop, I am certain we have the right people in place as the foundation of our student culture. With the 2012-13 admissions cycle, we will continue finding outstanding students to work with our growing faculty.

As I tell prospective students, ‘Join the adventure and share our passion!’

Bram Caplan
Director, Student Affairs