Skoltech is an international graduate research-focused university that was founded by the group of world-renowned scientists in 2011. Skoltech's curriculum focuses on technology and innovation, offering Master's programs in 11 technological disciplines. Students receive rigorous theoretical and practical training, design their own research projects, participate in internships and gain entrepreneurial skills in English. The faculty is comprised of current researchers with international accreditation and achievements.

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Gagarin’s first space flight brought Ed Crawley to Skoltech

12/04/2016

55 years ago, on April 12^th 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. We took this opportunity to ask Skoltech’s founding president, Edward F. Crawley, to tell about this event’s influence on America and on him personally. Here’s his interesting story:

“I was seven years young when Gagarin took the first flight, and I would have to say that this was the single most important event in my life, for several reasons. First, it shocked America. I have at home a copy of “Life” magazine from 1958 (see image below) that talks all about the virtue of Soviet education, and how Soviets are learning science and technology and Americans are playing baseball. The most immediate effect it had was the decision to teach foreign languages to students in schools, including Russian, which was never done there. Because of Sputnik and Gagarin I was taught French, when I was in first and second grade. Russian was introduced in high-school, when I was in tenth grade. Because of the three years I studied Russian in high-school, I continued to studying Russian in college. Russian in college was taught exactly because of these events. Basically all of my preparations that led me to my first visit in the Soviet Union, is a direct outcome of these events.

Life Magazine March 24, 1958 : Cover – Alexei Kutzkov of Moscow and Stephen Lapekas of Chicago are 16-year-old schoolboys a world apart.

“The second thing is the space race that started with Sputnik and Gagarin – It became my life. I decided to become involved in the space business by the time I was 15 years old, and it was one of the reasons I decided to study Russian, so I could have a career in the space business and work with the Soviet space program. What I had from a very early age, for some reason, was the determination that I would try to help the Soviets and the Americans work together in space. So I learned Russian in order to be able to have a career working with the Soviet space program, and this was my motivation from the very beginning. I studied Russian, then I got to MIT, and then I studied cosmonautics, so I had all these stepping stones.

“As a junior at MIT, I came and spent one semester in the Leningrad State University, studying Russian. This is all I was allowed to study as an American in the Soviet Union. I wasn’t allowed to learn physics or anything related to space. Then I went back to MIT and became a graduate student, a young researcher and a young professor.

“In 1987 I had the first opportunity to come and be a visitor in the Russian Space Research Institute in Moscow. After that week and a half in Moscow I started going to the Moscow Aviation Institute, as a visiting professor and in fact made good contacts with the Soviet space business of that time.
Let’s skip to 1993, when I was on the presidential commission of then new president Clinton, to make a decision about what to do with the plans for the international space station. And I, along with a couple of other colleagues on that commission, pushed very strongly to the idea of a joint space station between the Americans and the Russians, which of course became the ISS. So in the spring of 1993 I more or less fulfilled my life’s ambition, which was to try and get a major joint space program between the United States and Russia.
“In the spring of 2009 I was also on a presidential commission on space flight, this time with president Obama, and I was a very strong advocate of the next step of exploration for the moon and Mars as a joint project for the United States and Russia. But the current political environment is making it a difficult one to decide on right now. I’m relatively confident that once there will be an improvement in the relationship between the United States and Russia, this would be possible.

To conclude, this event really was the most important event of my professional life. It is the reason why I had some preparation of how to become the founding president of Skoltech – because of it I have studied Russian, came to the Soviet Union and Russia a couple of times, had friends here, and worked in the space industry”.

Space cooperation can bridge any political crisis, ESA head tells Skoltech students

10/04/2016

The Moon Village – a permanent lunar base station – should be a truly international affair, and Russian villagers are more than welcome, European Space Agency head Johann-Dietrich Woerner told Skoltech professors and students on Friday during a Skype lecture devoted to his lunar dream.

Radiation shelters for residents of the Moon Village are planned to be made from lunar resources. Photo: ESA.

The Moon Village is still very much a concept rather than a project at this stage, Woerner stressed, but nonetheless, the vision of the project is not without details.

The best location for the Moon Village is on the natural satellite’s South Pole, as there is water there and areas of permanent light, and the village structures will have to be made from the resources available on the moon, he said, speaking from Germany.

“The radiation there is very strong, so we will need to build structures, and they should not be sent from Earth. We should build them there using the materials available and 3D printing, producing radiation shelters for the astronauts. We cannot take all the stuff there – that’s in the past. We need to use the materials and resources that are there,” he emphasised.

The mission to the moon should combine human and robotic work, have multiple missions and purposes, and it should be a springboard for future deep space travel, said Woerner, a German civil engineer who has headed the agency since July 2015.

“Moon science is underdeveloped,” he said, adding that lunar tourism and commercial mining would also be possibilities offered by the Moon Village.

Stepping stone to Mars

While in recent months, missions to Mars – both real and imaginary – have been the focus of attention, the Moon Village would be a crucial first step toward making manned missions to Mars a reality, Woerner said.

“We are on our way to Mars right now with Russia, to look for life there,” he said, referring to ExoMars, a joint mission between the ESA and Roscosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, which launched an orbiter and lander from Baikonur on March 14 to collect data on the Martian atmosphere. “But it will take seven months to get there, and to come back, the whole journey is about two years,” he said.

“That’s OK for a robot, but think about humans: If someone becomes ill on their way to Mars, there’s no way to come home earlier. To go to the moon and back takes one week. We need to start with the moon, not go directly to Mars.

“America is planning its journey to Mars, but they know they can’t get there for 20-30 years. The Moon Village is the perfect stepping stone,” he said.

This week, Roscosmos said it planned to build its own research center on the moon by 2035, and said a location had already been chosen on the edge of a crater.

Lin Industrial, a private Russian space startup and resident company of the Skolkovo’s space cluster, said last year that it could build a lunar base for 550 million rubles ($8.2 million) – also at the moon’s South Pole.

The Moon Village structures will be made using 3D-printing technology, the ESA head expects. Photo: ESA.

Space above politics

But Woerner is adamant that the most important thing is that different countries should work together on one unified project.

“No one should do it alone: it should be a joint project – that’s why it’s a village,” he said.

“This is what space can do,” he said, showing a photo of German astronaut Alexander Gerst, Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and U.S. astronaut Gregory Wiseman waiting to take off for the International Space Station in May 2014, even as relations between the countries had plummeted at the height of the Crimean crisis.

“Even in times of crisis, we try to bridge the crisis,” said Woerner.

“Yesterday, we had the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. to get to the moon. We know the story: it was not focused on content, but on prestige. Today we’re in a totally different world,” he said.

His call for international cooperation was echoed by the representative of the ESA in Moscow, Rene Pischel, who was present in the lecture theater at Skoltech.

There are two main fields of cooperation between Russia and ESA: joint experiments on the ISS, and the ExoMars mission that recently launched from Baikonur, he said, adding that cooperation in space was strong despite international political tensions on Earth.

“Everybody is really trying to keep space out of the political equation. One reason is that space, as we have heard, is a bridge that we should use even during critical situations. The other is that space programs are very long-term, so if we always reacted to short-term political crises or difficulties, we wouldn’t get anywhere,” said Pischel.

The ESA is made up of 22 member states plus Canada.

The lecture was organised by Skoltech’s Space Center as part of Professor Rupert Gerzer’s course on Human Spaceflight.

Text by Shura Collinson, Sk.ru

Belarusian startup tour

07/04/2016

by Ido Nativ

In the past several years Belarus has earned the reputation of the leading “IT country” in the Eastern European region. The latest success of the Belarusian IT entrepreneurship is MSQRD, the popular face swapping app that was just recently bought by Facebook. Therefor it’s no surprise that the Russian StartUp Tour is crossing the border ever since it began.

On a sunny spring day in Minsk, hundreds of students, researchers and entrepreneurs gathered at the Belarusian State University of Agricultural Technology to attend the different lectures, seminars, mentoring sessions, and of course to network and make connections.

One of the first speakers was Skoltech professor Dzmitry Tsetserukou, who’s actually a native Belarusian. Prof. Tsetserukou presented Skoltech to the audience that filled the big hall, and told them about the cooperation with MIT, the labs and the stipends for the talented lucky ones who will get to Skoltech. After that Tsetserukou focused on his big love and expertise – robots. He started with the global perspective of the field, and in Russia and Belorussia’s rank in that industry. Then he moved on to the latest innovations in robotics, with particular emphasis on its use in agriculture (after all, it is an agricultural university and besides, agriculture is one of the main themes of the tour this year). Eventually he presented some of the robotic projects done in Skoltech. During his presentation, Tsetserukou was engaging the audience with questions and high energy. Afterwards he was surrounded by students and colleague professors, who wanted further information.

After the event we asked Prof. Tsetserukou to tell us the secret of his energized presentation. “First of all it’s my home town”, He replied and smiled, “but even more than that, I like my work, I like what I do and I’m highly motivated to make historical achievements. To be a part of this innovation is a great opportunity for me. Another motivation of mine is to make an excellent environment for my students, so the students grow up in an international level laboratory. I saw my students work as a team, encountering problems and solving them together. They were so excited that they couldn’t sleep before project demonstration. The robotics lab is like a home for the students. They are very motivated that sometimes they don’t go home, but stay to sleep in the lab. When you love what you do, you will most likely be successful in your future career in the technology innovation”.

To sum up we asked Prof. Tsetserukou how he would describe the desired students for Skoltech. “We are looking for motivation and skills. We would like to find the golden standard for Skoltech students to choose the best ones, to make them leaders in technology innovation. We need more such leaders in both Russia and Belarus, so we will have more success stories like MSQRD who will contribute the technology development in our own countries”.

So if you think you have the skills and feel the motivation burning in you, we invite you to come to the Open Doors event on April 23^rd, or directly apply to Skoltech.

From Kazakhstan to Bucknell University to an internship at Skoltech

05/04/2016

Ksenia Tsoktoeva – “I want to make a worthy contribution to the work at the Laboratory of Robotics team and improve my own level in Computer Science”.

Among Bucknell’s student Ksenia Tsoktoeva’s interests, a special place belongs to programming and computer science. So when she thought about her internship, it became apparent that working under the guidance of prof. Dzmitry Tsetserukou at the Skoltech Laboratory of Robotics will be the best choice and the reason to cross the Atlantic again. Ksenia told us about her expectations from the internship and the work on the Reachbot project.

Please tell us about yourself first. Where are you from and how you became a student of the University in US?
- I grew up in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. When I was in 9th grade, I was at physical-mathematical school, and I filed an application to study in Canada. I had a long time desire to try to learn abroad, and my parents supported me in that. Everything went well and from the 10th grade I lived and studied in Vancouver.
Moving to the Canadian school was easy to get used to – in our school, there were many students from Russia, Kazakhstan, Spain, Germany, Mexico and other countries, and in the international collective you adapt quickly. The education system in Canada involves a number of mandatory classes and you also can choose what you like or need. I was good at math and took extra hours of math and physics.
In December 2013 I was able to get to the Top 25% in the Canadian Open Mathematics Challenge competition, which was conducted by the Canadian Mathematical Society. A year later with the same result, I participated in the Canadian Senior Mathematics Contest at the University of Waterloo and became the champion among schoolchildren.

You’ve been very successful in high school in Canada. Why didn’t you choose a university in Vancouver for example?
- There are two factors – personal and financial. By the end of school, my family had moved to the United States and in America there’s a much better developed system of scholarship grants. The choice fell on Bucknell University in Lewisburg not only because it is one of the best American universities, but also because, thanks to the success at the Olympics, I was able to get a grant that covers 2/3 of my tuition fees. The important thing was that Bucknell, although prestigious, is very small university and the average teacher or professor there has about nine students. This format and interaction of students and professors suited me more than studying at a large university, where one professor may have a few dozens or even a hundred or two hundred students, whose names he doesn’t even remember.

What do you do at the University?
- Now I’m just trying to understand and decide for myself what areas I am most interested in. The largest number of hours I have now taken is in applied mathematics, statistics, programming, mathematical studies, linear algebra and philosophy.

How did the idea come to Skoltech?
- The idea to try an internship at Skoltech came when I realized that no one in America is waiting especially for a first-year student on serious internship. Spending time on carrying papers from the printer to the shredder is not for me. Four years is a very short time and I want to spend it with the maximum benefit. I never studied computer science and programming before the university. This opportunity presented itself in Bucknell. In the last semester I started studying Python, and in the next one I will begin learning Java and C++. I had programming in mind, and although I understand that as long as I have the level of a beginner programmer, I want to learn more about the development of software, and how it works from the inside. So when I got the answer from Skoltech, that they liked my resume and I was invited for an internship, there was no doubt.

What do you expect from an internship in Skoltech?
- I expect to learn a lot. Once I finish the semester in early May, I’m going to start preparing for the internship based on recommendations of prof. Tsetserukou. I would like to be good intern and make a proper contribution to the work of the team.

What will you do after the internship?
- I hope to continue my education. I will try to expand my field of knowledge. I will get a Ph.D. and, of course, an internship at Skoltech will be another important step towards this goal.

Dzmitry Tsetserukou, Skoltech professor, head of the Laboratory of Robotics:

– During her internship Kseniya will be working with the Reachbot team. This is a project dedicated to teaching a team of two robots with varying degrees of mobility (SLAM and NAO) to achieve goals and move objects together. The mobile robot SLAM should, scanning the area with help of 3D-scanner, to determine its location and nature of the terrain. Finding an obstacle in the form of steps, for example, which it cannot pass, SLAM will give the command to the NAO humanoid robot with 25 degrees of freedom, to climb the stairs, take the object and give it to the mobile robot.
Ksenia will join to the team and will be responsible for creating communication programs for the two robots. She will also be involved in the development of computer vision software for Reachbot’s objects recognition.
I think that she would like her tasks. The project is complicated, but she is a good student and had promised to work hard.

Federal Grid Company is exploring the possibility of cooperation with Skoltech

31/03/2016

The leaders of the Federal Grid Company “UES” visited Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology to learn about Skoltech and its abilities, and to discuss possible cooperation in the area of power-grids in the future.

The delegation was headed by Andrey Murov, Chairman of the Board of “FGC UES”, and included Pavel Korsunov and Natalia Ozhegina, Vice-Chairmen of the Board of “FGC UES”; Dmitry Klokov, director of external communications; Dmitry Tyron, Deputy General Director of Construction “ECMC UES”; Anton Sheverdov, director of the construction of facilities in the regions of the Center of “ECMC UES” and Sergei Ponomarev, chief expert at “FGC UES”. The guests got acquainted with the program of construction projects at the “Skolkovo” Innovation Center, and with the work of Skoltech and activity of its research centers.

High officials of the Skolkovo foundation – Maxim Sheifel, Acting Vice-President, Skolkovo City Manager; Vasily Belov, Senior Vice President of Innovation; Nikolai Grachev, vice president and executive director of the Cluster of energy-efficient technologies; Anton Yakovenko, General Director of “ODAS Skolkovo” – informed the guests about the progress of the construction of the energy infrastructure at the Skolkovo Innovation Center.

Alexey Ponomarev, Skoltech’s vice president of strategy and industrial cooperation; Prof. Alexander Ustinov, deputy director of the Research Center for Energy Systems and Ivan Sherstov, director of programs for cooperation with the industry, presented Skoltech’s program of activities and proposals for cooperation with “FGC UES” in the field of electric grid systems.

The guests were shown a complex pilot of an overhead power lines monitoring system, as well as individual solutions in an integrated power line monitoring system: project of the unique “Kanatahod” (“tight rope” in Russian) copter-rope walker, able to land on a high-voltage lines wire, to monitor power lines and the icing monitoring system (MIG).

The guests from “FGC UES” got acquainted with the work of the energy systems laboratory, advanced structures, processes and materials. At the end of the visit, both sides agreed to continue to discuss promising areas of cooperation with Skoltech at the level of experts.

Bienvenue à Skoltech, IFP School

30/03/2016

by Ido Nativ

A delegation from the French Petroleum Institute – IFP School – visited Skoltech on March 29th to discuss joint projects in the field of education and research programs. This visit is another step in the tightening relations between Skoltech and France, after the visit of the French Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, Mr. Emmanuel Macron at Skoltech two months ago.

The french delegation was led by Director of the Center of Economics and Management at IFP School, prof. Nadine Bret-Ruza and included Vladimir Alejandro Cheque-Flores, Program supervisor, and Prof. Sylvain Boyer. After a general presentation about Skoltech, given by Alexei Sitnikov, Vice-President for Institutional and Resource Development, the guests were acquainted to Skoltech Center for Energy Systems by Prof. Alexander Ustinov, its associate director, and to the Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery by Dr. Alexei Cheremisin, the center’s associate director. After the presentations and discussions, the guests visited the centers’ labs.

Based in Rueil-Malmaison, IFP School was founded in 1954. Its forerunner was the oil laboratory set up after the First World War University. Today, IFP School is part of the French Petroleum Institute (IFP), which specializes in technical training, research and management education for the needs of oil, gas and chemical industries, as well as in the field of propulsion systems engineering. The school graduates approximately 600 students per year in 20 graduate programs (10 in English), employing 40 regular professors and 350 instructors from industry

Robotics presentation – more diverse and more practical

29/03/2016

by Ido Nativ

As the 3^rd term of the academic year came to its end, Skoltech students presented their projects created in the robotics laboratory, at the final seminar “The Age of Intelligent Machines” of the “Dynamic systems and control” course.

Five teams of prof. Dzmitry Tsetserukou’s students showed the originality of solutions and real commercial potential of projects:

Industrial Robot – Andrey Rykov and Alexander Anikin.
Team advisor (TA): Prof. Victor Lempitsky.
SwarmAir/Quadcopter control – Ivan Kalinov, Stanislav Kruglik, Daniil Merkulov and Anastasia Vasilenko.
TA: Evgenii Tsykunov, Yuri Sarkisov, Anastasia and Nikita Rodnichenko.
Autonomous Navigaton of Mobile Robot Eugenii Izrailit, Georgii Klushin, Anastasia Stelvaga and Kalan Abe.
TA: Artem Pavlov and Oksana Gareeva
Haptics – Maria Victorova and Pavel Sukhov.
TA: Dzmitry Tsetserukou.
EuroBot - Petrovskii Aleksandr, Yurieva Evgeniya, Shipitko Oleg, Marko Simic, Postnikov Alex and Golovanov Sergey.
TA: Gonnochenko Aleksey and Artem Pavlov.

The participation in the courses and the competitions is aimed to help students to develop practical skills in robotics for specific tasks. They master the design of mechanical parts, electronics, coding, but not less important is the development of teamwork skill.

Apart from their knowledge, creativity and dedicated staff of teachers and advisors, the students had for their disposal both the new Robotics lab, and a special grant. Prof. Tsetserukou expressed his appreciation and gratitude for that: “I want to thank Igor Seleznev, Director of Research Programs. Thanks to a grant from the Unmanned Vehicle Program, one team was able to develop a guidance system based on monocular visual odometry. The system uses a web camera to determine the position quadrocopters, without the use of GPS-sensor”

At the end of all presentations, the judges announced the winning teams. As in past years, the judges took in consideration ideas and its compliance to applied robotics, as well as how the project relates to the curriculum. Apart from professor Tsetserukou and Lempitsky, the panel of judges included graduates Dmitry Suvorov and Roman Zhukov, who themselves participated in past seminars like this.

“We have seen a growing level of the participants and how they implement their projects”, said Roman Zhukov, “Three years ago, when it was just the beginning, the main part of the course was theory and calculations. On the second workshop, it was already 50:50 modeling and application development. In this current presentation we saw an even larger share of applied results. This shows that students actively use the equipment, and learn to work with it.
An important practical aspect is the teamwork on the project – during preparation for the workshops the teams has all to become a basis of future startups. For example, our technology created for participation in the Eurobot contest, formed the basis of our startup Webot“.

In this spirit, we wish great success to all the teams, hoping they will all manage to commercialize their ideas. Our congratulations go to this year’s winners: team EuroBot with their robots for future Eurobot-2016 contest, and team Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robot. Well done and good luck!

Winners: the Autonomous Navigation of Mobile Robot team.

Winners: the EuroBot team.

A delegation from Airbus Group and Philips visited Skoltech

28/03/2016

by Ido Nativ

One of Skoltech’s main goals is establishing strong and substantial cooperation relations with key industrial players. Airbus and Philips are most certainly such players, and a delegation from both companies visited Skoltech to establish working relationships and identify promising areas of cooperation. The delegation was led by Dr. Jean Boti, chief technical officer at Airbus group, who soon will takes over as Philips director of innovations and strategy. Continue reading →