I did my bachelor research in Biophysics at MIPT, and I am thankful to my first supervisors for my first steps at the research which I did molecular dynamic simulations of membrane proteins at. However, I decided not to be limited only by the computational technique applied to a set of biological problems and to try something more. Also, I wanted to improve my practical programming skills and study the perspective Data Science field, which also can be useful for tasks in Biology. I was aware from my MIPT friends that Skoltech has a strong Data Science programme with high quality professors and motivated students. The main reason for joining is that Skoltech is a place where I could grow up as a professional.

All the time I wanted to participate in projects including physics or programming and biology. When I was a second year master student I started to search for positions in industry, however I was not sure that I could find a position in Data Science and Biology at the same time. So I applied my CV to IT companies, even those not connected with Biology. I was accepted for an internship position at Huawei at the beginning of the second year, but they requested my supervisor's permission first. Unfortunately, my supervisor didn't approve for me to work while studying, therefore I had to reject the position. I realized that he was right, and it would be difficult to work and conduct good research in parallel, but a successful interview made me feel more confident.

At the end of my study at Skoltech, I came across Skoltech Career Center which helps to find positions for the students and connects with HR from interested companies that collaborated with Skolkovo. Also I found a position at Insilico Medicine but it required more experienced candidates than me. Despite this fact, I understood that this company has high correlation with my expectations and I decided to try my luck and send my CV through two ways: HeadHunter and Lada — the Head of Skoltech Career Center. I was lucky to be interviewed and accepted.

The official name of my position is a Big Data Specialist at Insilico Medicine, however I would consider it as a machine learning researcher. Currently, I have two projects in the InClinico product: the prediction of drug side effects via knowledge graph approaches and the prediction of links between pharma companies' press releases, containing information about clinical trials, and indices of clinical trials. While working under the first project, I have studied a lot about graph approaches that had been an uncovered topic for me before. I have tested benchmarks, collected and preprocessed data, and also applied models to our graph dataset.

Now I am focused on the second project, that has higher priority because it needs to be embedded in the product before its launch. I have made feature engineering, experimented with classifiers, started to work with parallelization of processes to improve quality and performance.

The main skill that I have developed during my research is independence in research planning, which is an important skill in real life and at my current work (Editor's Note: "independence in research planning" is an opportunity to begin to demonstrate the creative and independent thinking required of a successful scientist). First steps were difficult for me, because I used to discuss every step and I was afraid to be wrong, so I needed to ask for advice on how to fix problems in a better way. After some time I was feeling free in decision making and started to apply and check ideas on my own. My scientific advisor was Professor Ivan Oseledets who is a talented mathematician and a busy open-minded person with mountains of various projects. I decided to choose him after finishing the Numerical Linear Algebra course which I loved because the course was so challenging and it had useful and interesting material.

Skoltech gave me a good background that allows me to study state-of-the-art techniques applicable to work problems. At Skoltech I faced many complex concepts and I learned how to deal with them, how to understand them, and I studied to study.

● Don't be afraid of new ideas and opportunities.
● Discuss problems and possible ways of solutions (without cheating).
● Improve your skills all the time, you don't know what you will need the next day.
● Try to apply for a position you want, be assertive (Editor's Note: "to be assertive" means to have or show a confident and bold personality). Positive or negative feedback and interview questions are very valuable. You can ask and understand which skills you should improve to get the position.
● Correct your CV according to the position, underline real skills that correspond to the job.

We are Skoltech. A new type of university in Russia, established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT with the vision of being a world-leading institute of science and technology. From the zero stage, Skoltech has rapidly advanced along the way towards a top-100 young university recognized globally by Nature Index.