Skoltech’s class of 2018 made its first step into the academic year. About 130 new students came to Skoltech today for orientation day – to fill the relevant documents, to get acquainted with the procedures and policies, with the educational program, and to interact with their new classmates.
President Kuleshov welcomes the new students
After the traditional coffee and cookies, the new students were welcomed by Skoltech President, Academician Alexander P. Kuleshov, who said: “Congratulations! Now you are facing the new stage of your life, and you have only one opportunity to get really high-class education. It’s only one opportunity in your life, you cannot lose it.
At Skoltech it’s the innovation that makes the difference from other universities in the Russian federation. You will face some non-conventional system here. You have to choose your courses yourselves. In order to choose correctly, you have to understand from the beginning what you would like to see in your life, what your career would be, what kind of scientist or researcher you want to be.
Don’t forget that the state expanse here on your education per capita is around ten times more than in other universities. Our goal is to train scientific and engineering elite of our country. Skoltech was created just for this goal – to prepare the elite engineers and scientists for our country.”
Ivan Bortnik greets the students with the help of a special interpreter – Prof. Konstantin Severinov, director of Skoltech Biomed Center
Kuleshov’s greetings were followed by a short speech of Ivan Bortnik, the first director of the “Bortnik Fund”, who told the students “We need a scientific innovators, those who can transform results of science in business projects. You should tell yourself as soon as possible who you are and what you are going to do in Skoltech – are you an entrepreneur or do you tend more to pure, fundamental science?”
After his speech, he awarded the certificates to the winners of UMNIK 2016 competition: to Artem Mikelov for his project “Development of new methods and software for the diagnosis of allergic diseases, and assessing their development risk on the basis of analysis of individual repertoires of B-cell receptor using next-generation sequencing technologies”, and to Ivan Valiev for his project “Development and implementation of expression systems in Streptomyces.”
Next week the new students will start their 2-year journey to become the elite scientists and engineers of Russia with Skoltech’s unique innovation workshop. We send them our best wishes for fruitful studies and groundbreaking achievements.
Welcome, Skoltech Class of 2018!
