In his silver and white acamedic robe, Skoltech president Ed Crawley rang the school bell on Monday to usher in the innovation university’s fourth academic year amid record intake figures and its most geographically diverse cohort yet.
Skoltech president, professor Ed Crawley, ringing in the new academic year on Monday. Photo: sk.ru
Knowledge Day
The traditional ceremony marking ‘Knowledge Day,’ which is celebrated across the country on September 1, the first day of school, was held early to coincide with the start of the week.
“As we welcome this fourth class of students to Skoltech, who have literally come from around the world, we trust that they will receive a nearly unique education, based not only on science, but of the application of that science to innovation,” said Crawley, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Skoltech’s partner university, in comments to sk.ru.
In this early growth phase, every year is a record intake year, but competition to get into Skoltech has never been so tough: For every student that was accepted, nine were rejected.
“It’s the most competitive selection process that we have yet had,” said Crawley at Monday’s ceremony.
With over 120 PhD and master’s students joining Skoltech this year, that puts the total number of applications at well above 1,000. One-fifth of the intake is from abroad, with a 66 percent male and 33 percent female split.
The geographical spread takes in 25 countries, with Australia the only continent not represented. The students come from everywhere from Armenia to Bangladesh; from China to Colombia; from Iran to Japan; from Peru to the UK and the United States.
They were all in attendance on Monday at the Technopark Office Center, which Skoltech is making its temporary home before a final 135,000 sq. m. facility comes online in the next couple of years.
Decked out in his academic robe before a bubbly crowd of 350 students and faculty, Professor Crawley noted: “This is a day to celebrate. To celebrate learning, discovery and entrepreneurship, to celebrate the beginning of the new school year.”
“It’s our job to discover the history of science. It’s our job to create things that have never been – this is the task of engineering. And it’s our task to bring these goods and services to the market based on discovery and invention. That’s innovation. And our main job at Skoltech is to accelerate innovation.”
Students and faculty at the Technopark Office Center, Skoltech's temporary HQ, on Monday. Photo: sk.ru
Enormous growth
Crawley reflected on the “enormous growth” of the institution in a relatively short space of time: The first bell-ringing ceremony was held at MIT in front of the inaugural intake of 20 or so students and a handful of professors, who returned to rented space in Moscow that was lacking the critical research infrastructure needed to make Skoltech a world-class education facility.
Two or three years from now, the university will boast more than 100 professors, and about 600 students at the new Skoltech building.
“We have much to be thankful for today,” he added, extending his appreciation to the Russian government and the Skolkovo Foundation as the initiators of Skoltech.
“I want to say to the new students: This is your day. This is the day to transition to the life before today to the life after it – the life at Skoltech. To commemorate this day, for the fourth time I’ll ring the bell and start the school year,” he added, swiftly drowned out by applause from an energized crowd.
Skoltech-green balloons were released into the air and a selfie session ensued.
Dean Keith Stevenson warned the students that “because you have all dreamed big, you will be tested immensely,” but added, “We are committed in helping you achieve to your fullest.”
Meet the students
In among the merriment, four students sat down with sk.ru to talk about their motivation for studying at one of the world’s first universities to have innovation at the core of its curriculum.
Andy Lamb, 21, from North Wales
Andy Lamb, 21, from North Wales, made the leap to Moscow from Imperial College London, where he developed a taste for space exploration during his degree in general physics.
“I got involved in extra-curricular space societies, and that fostered the interest in taking it beyond the just an extra-curricular activity,” he recalls.
In organizing conferences for two space societies, Lamb spent time with the speakers it was his job to invite.
“It was very strange how I heard about Skoltech,” he said. “At Imperial College, where it’s all science and technology, they advertised for this study abroad fair last autumn. So I go along, but it’s all things that an Imperial student would never do, like humanities, and colleges in America and so forth. Why have you invited us here?”
“The one relevant one was Skoltech. And Skoltech was sitting right in the middle of this room in a hotel in London among two dozen other institutes. They were advertising the energy course, and I found about the space course. I started researching master’s programs, but I found that if you’re looking for a space course, it’s not that they’re too technical, it’s that they’re too theoretical. They lack some of the practical experience. Or you just end up taking an aeronautics course, which has rather limited space content. So one of the few courses I ended up considering was Skoltech’s space science course.”
“I read the curriculum, that looked great, but it was really appealing to come to somewhere that’s founded on the principle of applying knowledge from the start.”
Like the other students, Lamb had to undergo a selection process with various challenges and tasks.
In one conundrum, the students had to calculate whether it was possible to make it back to earth from Titan, one of Jupiter’s moons, in a spacecraft with only a certain amount of fuel.
“The answer, of course deliberately, is ‘just about’ – because they’re testing to see if you understand all the margins of error.”
Building bridges out of lollipop sticks and answering the questions of a panel of five professors – or as Lamb put it, “grilled by most of the faculty,” - were also part of the process.
The ideal outcome of his Skoltech studies? “It’s all about the options. I could do a PhD here, I could go further and try and insert myself in some established company. All the talks in the past focused on satellite technology, I know there’s courses here that can help with that and there’s existing industry for that, so I’d definitely be interested in following up.”
“But in the Skoltech spirit, who knows, there could be an opportunity that begs to be taken for a startup or something new, which I would definitely be interested in.”
A great place for innovation
Konstantin Gnyp, a 23-year-old student from the town of Klimovsk to the south of Moscow, said he felt unfulfilled at Moscow State University, where he studied petrochemistry.
Petrochemist Konstantin Gnyp
“MSU is mostly about science, and I had something more technological in mind. So I found out about the oil and gas engineering course at Skoltech, and I decided to apply here.”
“I would like to create an innovation; I would like to make a product. This is a great place to do that. Furthermore, there are a lot of people with different specializations whom you can always ask for advice. Also Skolkovo is looking for new innovation ideas. That’s why I think it’s one of the best places to start your business.”
He learned his English – the official language at Skoltech - from travelling to international summer camps every year since the age of 14.
“That’s the way you really meet people from all over the world, study English and really party!”
Skoltech will equip Gnyp with the skills he needs to set up shop in energy-related innovations, but the Russian had a warning: “Unfortunately, it’s pretty difficult to start a business in the oil and gas engineering field. You need huge amounts of money and quiet a lot of time to create something,” he said.
“But I’m really interested in different fields, like IT for example, so if I have an idea I can just grab some friends from Skoltech and say ‘OK, let’s try it.’ In two years I see myself as a CEO of a company, but even if it’s not going to work I can find a place at a big oil and gas company to offer them the innovation ideas that I developed at Skoltech.”
Anastasia Fursova is a 22-year-old student from Anapa who studied robotics and mechatronics at St. Petersburg University.
“It’s really cool here,” she said about Skoltech. “I want more practical work. At this university, it’s all about practical work, about the applications of science, and all that we study here is geared towards real life.”
Fursova enjoys designing and constructing robots, inspired when she was just 9 years old by the book Elektronic, a popular Soviet-era story about a robot that escapes its laboratory and goes on adventures with an identical-looking little boy.
“I love sci-fi, and the book about Elektronic was a big influence. It was so amazing. I thought: I want to create this, I want to make it.”
She is embarking on a master’s degree in space science and technology and would prefer using the experience and education drawn at Skoltech to enter the new space industry, for example at RSC Energia, Russia’s state spacecraft manufacturer.
Lee Yunjeong's family was surprised when she chose Skoltech.
South Korean student Lee Yunjeong, 26, meanwhile, found Skoltech at an open house for prospective graduate students held in Seoul last fall. She says she was intrigued by what Skoltech had to offer after a discussions with Bram Caplan, Skoltech’s director of student affairs.
“I really didn’t know anything about Moscow, or Russia, or anything about this part of the world in general,” she said.
“My family was shocked to learn that I applied, I got in and I wanted to go.”
Lee didn’t have to make a decision on the spot – she, like many of the other international students, was invited to Russia to go through a selection process.
“They were willing for invite me over for three days and we had challenges and interviews, and so that really just changed my impression about the whole institution and what they do here. So I was like: ‘It looks like it’s going to work out for me and I would love to give it a try.’”
Lee has a very cosmopolitan background: She was born in South Korea but quickly moved to Canada. She attended boarding school in Texas, before she settled in New York. There, Lee double-majored in finance and mathematics at New York University.
“I became interested in energy, I became interested in learning about materials. My passion changed. I had tons of opportunities to meet with all sorts of people in New York. So when I went there and talked to people in various sectors, I started to think about what people go through every day. We need electricity, we need water, all that kind of stuff. I started to see a different side of the world and I wanted to learn more, and not just from a business perspective but from actually understanding products and how they work. How sustainable everything is in the long run. Can we produce enough energy for the increasing population?”
Subsequent work in the IT sector proved unfulfilling and she quit her job to return to her homeland in 2014. The meeting with Caplan started a chain of events that brought her to Skoltech.
Though it wasn’t particularly stimulating, work in IT gave Lee the computer knowledge and problem-solving skills that could make her a top-class innovator.
“I’m open to different opportunities, and that’s how people should be now and in the future,” Lee said, when asked whether she planned to start her own company. “You never know what’s going to happen. I never thought of coming to Russia at all, but now I’m here. I don’t even know what’s going to happen, but I’m really interested in studying at the moment and learning more about material science and the materials used for energy.”
Skoltech is a private graduate research university in Skolkovo, Russia, a suburb of Moscow. Established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT, Skoltech educates global leaders in innovation, advances scientific knowledge, and fosters new technologies to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. Applying international research and educational models, the university integrates the best Russian scientific traditions with twenty-first century entrepreneurship and innovation.
A new concept
Skoltech represents a new concept of international university. Its mission is to create educational, scholarly and economic impact in the Russian Federation and around the world by educating talented graduate students and conducting research programs to address key challenges.
Skoltech’s Centers for Research, Education and Innovation (CREI) are the key building blocks in this effort. Their main goal is to help develop a world-class graduate university that combines education, research and innovation seamlessly.
The CREIs will pursue leading multidisciplinary research in their fields, deliver world-class graduate education programs which are aligned with a European (Bologna) structure in a Russian context, and generate results that can form the basis for innovation and entrepreneurship activities at Skoltech and in Russian industry.
They will build capacity of all kinds at Skoltech, designed as they are to have a maximally broad impact on Russia.