Friends and families of the students of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology came to the research university from all over the world on Thursday to see their loved ones graduate.
The graduates toss their mortarboard caps up into the air outside the current Skoltech building. Photo: Sk.ru.
The students were the second class ever to graduate from the international private university, which was founded in cooperation with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011.
“Doing space science in Russia was so fantastic, I’m so excited,” said Divya Shankar from Bangalore, India, who was celebrating completing a master’s in space science and technology.
Shankar, surrounded after the ceremony by proud relatives, may be leaving Skoltech, but she will remain in Moscow, having landed a job as a space systems engineer at up-and-coming satellite component startup Sputnix, a resident of the Skolkovo Foundation’s space cluster.
Maria Ryskina, a Russian student who was studying data analysis and management within the university’s IT track, said she was sorry to be leaving Skoltech, but “happiness prevails.”
“This was a long journey, but a very fulfilling one. This is the place where I really broadened my horizons,” she told Sk.ru after the graduation ceremony.
“There is not a single thing I regret about coming here. I was a little skeptical at first, but this is probably the best decision I ever made,” she said.
Ryskina is now moving on to a PhD in at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but said she would like to return to Skoltech one day.
“Maybe I’ll come back here as a postdoc, or maybe even as a faculty member,” she laughed.
Alexander Kuleshov, Skoltech’s president, congratulated the students in a brief speech and offered them some equally pithy advice.
“Time is very short. Don’t waste it, and do your best right now,” he said, adding: “Everybody has their own chance, but not everybody uses it.”
Skoltech president Alexander Kuleshov. Photo: Sk.ru.
One of the guest speakers at the graduation ceremony was Vladimir Zelman, professor and co-chairman of the department of anesthesiology, professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Keck School of Medicine, University of South California.
“You have a huge future,” he told the rows of students clad in gowns and mortarboard caps.
“You’re the generation who’s really ahead of their time.”
The well-wishers also included Russian cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, who spent 166 days in space in 2013 and is now preparing for another mission.
Misurkin told the students that overcoming obstacles only makes us stronger, and urged them to find a happy medium in whatever they go on to do. “Leave time for life, family, friends and leisure,” he advised.
His first piece of advice was echoed in a short speech by graduating student Adeniyi Adebayo.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned here, it’s fearlessness in the face of any challenge,” he said.
Adebayo confessed to feeling somewhat sceptical when he arrived at the fledgling university in the summer of 2014.
“But that first week changed my understanding of what I called education,” he said.
Edward Crawley, Skoltech’s founding president, used the opportunity to reflect on the past five years and anticipate the future.
“I like to say we came here, just the two of us – me and my laptop – to make a university,” Crawley, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, told the second year of graduates.
His advice to the class of 2016 was to look for problems and opportunities, and try to solve them. He said his own criteria for deciding whether to take on a project – including the ambitious task of founding an international graduate research university from scratch in Russia – were: Will it help society, and can I do it?
Crawley also looked ahead to next year, when Skoltech is due to move into its giant state-of-the-art new building.
“I went to see the rector of Moscow State University today. It’s the most incredible building,” he said of the iconic Stalin-era skyscraper.
“And I said, pretty soon it won’t be the most important university building in Moscow. Because people will be coming to see Skoltech.”