The first attendees of Skolkovo Open University, which is part of the ecosystem of the Innovation Centre, were 105 graduate students and young scientists, selected from among 500 finalists currently studying in six Moscow partner universities of Skolkovo (HSE, MISA, MIPT, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow State University, and Bauman). The event was also attended by the heads of the Skolkovo Development of the Center for Elaboration and Commercialization of New Technologies, friends and partners of the project. William Haseltine, an internationally renowned scientist and entrepreneur, one of the first researchers in the field of AIDS, founder of Human Genome Sciences Inc, told how he managed to combine business and science, achieving considerable success. Now Haseltine is studying the regeneration, stem cells and DNA. The lecture was devoted to these matters.
SOU will regularly hold lectures, workshops, training courses with outstanding thinkers, scholars and practitioners to develop imagination and creativity of the students, showing the variety of existing views of the world and ways of thinking.
"We want you to meet people who are certainly well known not only in scientific and engineering fields, but in entrepreneurship as well. We want you to have the possibility of communicating with people who have come a long way and ‘jumped across the abyss’ when nobody else dared to do it. These people are able to motivate others for productive work and transmit the power that will allow you to bridge the gap, so each of you can become a prominent, successful and interesting person," said Oleg Alexeev, vice-president of Skolkovo and managing director of education and research.
In addition, University students will participate in training seminars and seasonal schools, including those in partner companies and leading worldwide universities. Thus, this summer, volunteers can become students at Microsoft summer schools, and three of the best students, on the basis of special selection criteria, will be eligible to go on a 10-week international course at the Singularity University in California.