Independent
Studies
Period
ISP
Skoltech course catalog
January 13 – 31, 2025
ISP schedule for 2025
Results of voting for ISP-2025 student courses
1st place:
2nd place:
3rd place:
🥇 Introduction to 3D World-Building in Unreal Engine 5
Saumit Paul, MSc-1 student
(23 votes)
🥈 BodyBuilding
Konstantin Zamansky and Asma Benachour, PhD students
(19 votes)
🥉 Math Games
Anna Ponomareva, Mikhail Knyshenko and Vladimir Grigoriants, PhD students
(18 votes)
🥈 Introduction to Real Time Digital Simulation
Divine Okeke, PhD student
(19 votes)
Total number of votes: 231
Skoltech is proud of its ISP program, as it gives maximum flexibility to students and the freedom to discover and explore areas not always tightly bound with the traditional educational programs.
  • ISP encourages all members of the Skoltech community (students, faculty, staff, visiting faculty/staff/experts, etc.) to:
    • organize unique courses of their own design
    • participate in courses proposed by Skoltech faculty and researchers, invited lecturers, student
  • ISP offers a variety of courses for students to:
    • explore their interests beyond their main educational fields
    • make their academic learning truly interdisciplinary
    • gain experience in creation of innovative project
  • ISP focuses on four main areas:
    • Broadening Horizons – Beyond Profession
    • Soft Skills Development
    • Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I)
    • Career Development
Negotiations Hardcore Games by Dmitry Kulish
Why become an ISP instructor
  • You are an expert in some field, have deep interest and experience in some topic that you desire to share with other students
  • You are willing to receive invaluable experience in joining Skoltech’s educational process and working in cooperation with faculty and other students
  • You want to receive Certificates of Recognition for contributing to Skoltech’s educational process during the Independent Study Period
  • MSc-1 students
    ISP is a mandatory for MSc-1 students special three-week term in January.
    Requirements for the ISP period is 90 hours workload:

    1st option: courses – min. 90 hours;
    2nd option: courses – min. 50 hours + research – 40 hours;
    3rd option: teach a course* + courses OR research.
    • *You want to receive 100% extra hours to the proposed course workload as ISP course instructor
    • You want to receive additional scholarship for teaching one of top-3 courses
  • MSc-2 students
    • You are encouraged to teach ISP courses, however, your workload will be acquired via MSc Thesis Status Review process;
    • You are welcome to participate in ISP activities. Even though this will not be included into January workload.
    • You want to receive additional scholarship for teaching one of top-3 courses
  • You want to register your experience as an ISP course instructor as Pedagogical Experience
  • You want to receive additional scholarship for teaching one of top-3 courses
  • You are also welcome to enrol in ISP activities as a student to gain new knowledge and skills
  • You want to prepare for difficult courses of the curriculum
  • You want to provide introductory knowledge required for your curriculum course
  •  Your ISP contact hours are counted for teaching load
  • You want to gain teaching experience required for faculty positions
  • You would like to test your course and gather valuable feedback from students before incorporating it into the main curriculum
  • You would like to be a part of giving back to the community and sharing for the sake of sharing knowledge
  • You would like to get your project/lab known and attract more students
  • You would like to mentor and connect with potential future colleagues and collaborators, enabling them to identify and nurture emerging talent
  • You would like to be a part of giving back to the community and sharing for the sake of sharing knowledge
  • You would like to get your project/lab known
  • You would like to engage meaningfully with the next generation of innovators and thinkers
  • Participation for international experts is subject to local working rights and the provision of local bank details
  • Remuneration for services and travel costs may be provided in accordance with internal regulations
  • Experts from the Skolkovo ecosystem may participate on a pro bono basis
ISP courses
Students Feedback
  • "ISP is the most entertaining while experiencing different things that are not in our major program stream. The length and depth of courses, the ISP period before beginning a new term, the amount of work loads, and so on are all in good shape."
  • "Firstly, I really admire the way Skoltech delivers every single course. I was planning to take an offline course at first but due to health reasons, I had to travel home and follow the online courses. Although, I enjoyed these courses. Every instructor is great in delivering their courses of expertise. It will be really great to have more courses taught by Prof. Maxim Zhuk and learn from their experience. I am thankful to Skoltech to provide such courses taught by such great instructors. Sincerely!"
  • "ISP was a really cool event in my life. Thanks to all the instructors!"
  • "While I had expected that the course of Gregory Falkovich would be great in terms of the content, professionalism of Prof. Falkovich, and his teaching approach (and it absolutely was!), I had a real pleasure to take Yerassyl's course on Quantum Information. I really loved his commitment, high level of preparation, friendly and inspiring athmosphere in the lessons and all this beautiful mathematics!"
  • "In my heart is the course on Based Movies by the Petroleum guys 🤩❤️ It really made my ISP! Thank you guys for your commitment, professionalism, and the brand new perception of movies, which I now have due to you. And I had such a relaxation in your lessons after Term 2, wonderful:)."
  • "In general I was pretty satisfied by the ISP period. Eq and negotiation games course was very exciting and definitely very useful. Chess strategies course had its own pros and cons and some unusual (at least for me) curriculum ideas, but still was interesting."
ISP playlist
Contact
e-mail: education@skoltech.ru
jira: Education Support HelpDesk
phone: +7 (495) 280-1481
address: 30с1 Bolshoi boulevard, Skolkovo, 121205, Russian Federation