Vote
Independent
Studies
Period
January 12 – 30, 2026
I
S
P
Vote
Vote for ISP-2026 student courses

Watch video presentations of the proposed courses and vote for one course you find most compelling until December 7. We will count only one vote from one student email.
Level of study
Year of study
Choose 1 video you like
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-inspired memes
created by students from the ISP course 'Subverting Expectations: How Memes Transform Our Perception of Cult Cinema and Animation,' taught by PhD students Egor Zhermolenko and Anastasia Netrusova
Sorry, we are here for education and science, not cringe
(honestly)
Download file
ISP playlist

10th ISP anniversary — success stories of ISP instructors

Oksana
Kotovskaya
joined ISP 2023 as an MSc student with her collaborative course on workspace and workflow management in biology
read
Alexander Chekanov
joined ISP 2022 and ISP 2025 with a course on the introduction to smart people management
read
In 2023, you, as MSc-1, run your ISP course together with Nikita Vaulin. Do you remember whose idea it was?

I can’t say whose idea it was, because we actively discussed it. In the fall semester of the first academic year, Nikita and I held seminars for classmates. We made a club for solving algorithmic problems. So when the ISP was announced, Nikita and I decided that we should definitely do the course. We discussed what we could talk about, what topics we could cover.




Did you have teaching experience before ISP or was it your first time?

I had no experience because I didn’t have that opportunity. I really wanted to try my hand at teaching, so I was very happy when the ISP was announced. Before that, in the undergraduate school, I had seen graduate students teaching seminars as a teaching practice: just lectures and problem solving. For all undergraduate instructors, we had a course taught by Alexander Vaniev. It was super helpful because it generally gave an idea of what to do and how to do it: You don’t have to read the material for 3 hours and call people to the blackboard.
You are the winner of the first Best ISP Student Course Competition.
Oksana Kotovskaya

joined ISP 2023 as an MSc student with her collaborative course on workspace and workflow management in biology
Was it unexpected or were you striving to win? How did you feel during the class observation?

Of course I wanted to win! We spent a lot of time preparing the course: making a plan for each lecture, trying to diversify different approaches to the students as much as possible (some people listen more, some people watch more, and some people do more), and checking in advance that everything that was supposed to work was working. Before the class observation, I was a bit scared, but when the class started, it was clear that everything was going well. So we just followed the plan and enjoyed it.

Can you share an example of a particularly memorable moment from the ISP course?

The funny thing is that back then, in the winter of 2022-2023, the hype around ChatGPT had just started, not many people were using it. And already at the end of the course we decided to see what the AI suggests to pay attention to for people doing a course like ours. It was great to see that we followed all ChatGPT tips.

As a current PhD student, do you often see your students? Do you keep in touch with them?

Some of them stayed at Skoltech and we see each other often. Some of them left, but we keep in touch on social networks.

Do you plan to join ISP in the future?

Yes, I plan to do a course next year. I have two ideas, but I haven’t decided which one to start with.

What advice would you give to students considering teaching an ISP course, especially to those who want to win the competition?

Remember that the course is primarily for students. Connect with your audience. Try to make it comfortable for students to talk about something they don’t understand and ask questions.
How did you share your responsibilities?

When we were discussing the course, we decided to split it into two blocks: one about data space, i.e. how to set up a workspace, and the other about data flow, i.e. about pipelines. The first half was led by Nikita, and the second half by me. Also, our course was mostly practical. So while the first instructor was reading the material, the second instructor was helping the students if they had any problems, so that everything would go faster.
Alexander Chekanov

joined ISP 2022 and ISP 2025 with a course on the introduction to smart people management

You started with a 3-session ISP course and it has now evolved into a 3-credit course. Was the journey more of a challenge or a pleasure for you?

I approach my ISP courses as “trial versions” of full-fledged courses that I already have in mind to see whether there’s interest in the topic or not. Predicating about entrepreneurship and innovation without showing customer orientation myself does not resonate with my understanding of education and pedagogy. In my ISP courses, I try to provide to students an overall picture of a given topic from the management domain. My goal is not to invent something that we later spoon feed to our students as the ultimate truth, but rather to closely follow the format and content of courses offered at world-leading management schools. Therefore, I usually adapt and rely on course contents developed and published by world leading scholars in managerial peer reviewed journals, and if students show interest, I transform the course into a full-fledged three-credit course to deliver them a more comprehensive version of the course. Every year, when I update the content of my courses, I enjoy this journey because it allows me to stay updated not only with the newest and latest discussions happening in the academic field, but also link the theoretical part to practical cases from the industry, so students could understand better how theory and practice come together.


How do you integrate your interests in photography and music into your teaching practices or course content?

To me photography and music are ways of communication that allow enriching or conveying a message we want to transmit. While throwing texts, formulas, and tables into a slide might look appealing for certain audiences, I believe that format is not less important than content. Consequently, as a sign of respect to my audience, I’m always trying not only to put effort and professionalism into the content I deliver, but also how I deliver it.
Here’s where my interests in photography, music, and cinematography help me transmit the content (message) I want in the best possible way. Sometimes I think, “If I were to ask Christopher Nolan, Ridley Scott, or Hans Zimmer to transmit this message, how would they do that?” This helps me keep challenging myself and my creativity and keep going, year after year, in this endeavor of teaching.
What is the difference between teaching in the ISP and in a regular term?

I approach my ISP courses like a trailer for a movie — students get to know the general overview of a given topic and then decide if they want to learn further about the topic and enroll for the full movie. During the ISP course I’m trying to portray a realistic picture of what it takes in terms of dedication and effort to at least start scratching the surface of a new domain of knowledge that they might have heard of but never investigated in detail.
While management sciences might upfront look “easy” because many people get to believe they can easily become self-proclaimed experts in one or many of core managerial topics like strategy, marketing, finance, logistics, HR, etc. just because they can have a conversation about it in the canteen, without a genuine understanding, exposure, and dedication to it, it is something extremely hard to master. Otherwise, we would be greeting hundreds of thousands of Elon Musks or Steve Jobs every year, but somehow (surprisingly?) we are not there yet.

Once students realize that it takes much more than filling a Skolkovo application to master any managerial topic, after the brief ISP course they enroll into a regular term course, where they get a chance to dive deeper into the topic, discuss more examples, do more class exercises, and overall, start the journey to master at least some of the topics we discussed during the ISP course. Still, spoiler alert, it takes way more than one three-credit course to master anything, but at least students learn about the big picture and discover where they can find the necessary resources to keep advancing through their learning journey.

Are there any takeaways from your ISP course that you continue to use today?

Yes: Life is too short to spend your time on something that doesn’t inspire you, like trying to learn or master something you are not interested in, or when you don’t understand how you will put that into practice what you learnt. When starting any of my courses, I always keep asking my students the same question — why are they sitting here and not doing something else? I also tend to quite frequently ask myself the same question when heading to Skoltech. It can be quite interesting how far such a simple question can lead you!
Contact
e-mail: education@skoltech.ru
jira: Education Support HelpDesk
phone: +7 (495) 280-1481
address: 30с1 Bolshoi boulevard, Skolkovo, 121205, Russian Federation