I first heard about Skoltech in 2017 at the NASA Space Apps Challenge hackathon where a Skoltech team came out as a winner. We spent the day competing and the night after the finals walked around Moscow together. It was then that I learned about my dream university!

Fate led me back to Skoltech exactly one year later when I won Skoltech and Philips's neuro hackathon in Skolkovo. As a winner, I met many Skoltech students, understood Skoltech's mission and decided that I would study here. After completing my undergraduate studies, I applied to Skoltech without hesitation. In 2022 I have received my MSc degree in Information Science and Technology, and now I can say with confidence that Skoltech is the best choice for a student.

I started by developing custom software when I was at school. At the time, local small businesses in the services and trade sectors were eager to have their own websites. I quickly got the hang of website development and started looking for customers using my portfolio and popular methods, such as the grapevine, ads on bulletin boards, and social media. Soon I began to receive regular orders to update websites and completed them within a couple of days. I even had several long-term contacts with clients I found on freelance marketplaces. Along with websites, I have been engaged in mobile applications and programming microcontrollers. Simultaneously, I worked as a programmer in both large and small companies and participated in launching Internet projects.

In my free time, I delved into pet-projects that I tried to convert into startups. One of them, meCare, is a mobile app for malignant skin growth screening. I developed an app for monitoring mole growth and identifying mole type and tested it at the regional oncology center. When I entered Skoltech, I spent my free time working, starting from term 3 and until the end of my studies. From 5 o'clock in the afternoon to 3 o'clock in the morning, I worked remotely as a programmer at an international IT company. In the meantime, I launched a new project, BeDance. BeDance is a solution for objectively assessing choreography and learning dance.

Right from the start of my career track I needed a place where I could post my contacts, background, services, portfolio, and other information. I was sure though that I needed a single point of entry for all this information that I could flexibly manage on my own, while keeping my links up to date for a long time. As regards my personal website, it has served effectively as a source of new customers, my main point of contact, and a showcase for my professional activities. So the personal website works great for me.

In my opinion, a personal website have several roles:

✦ Cyber business card
You can use QR code with a link to my website instead of a business card. If your contact details change, you will not have to print new business cards and make updates on all the resources, losing people in the process.

✦ Always up-to-date resume
Some people use a common pdf/word file, or LinkedIn, or profiles on hh.ru, rabota.ru, avito.ru, etc., and social media. Still others prefer to have their own website. In this way you are free to manage it the way you want by adding, changing or removing information or adding interactive content at any time. Of course, this may not be suitable for all occupations, but for some, such as IT professionals, it is the best solution.

✦ Flexible portfolio
If you have achievements to share, a personal website is the best way to do it. With modern technology, you can easily post photos, videos and user scenarios, as well as your own projects and achievements. These could be sketches and projects for designers, tracks for musicians, code, stack or project descriptions for programmers, video lectures for professors, cases for lawyers and so on.

You do not need many skills, time and resources to create and maintain a basic version of your website. There are some tools examples:

✦ No-code: website builders, CMS engines, tilda, ucoz and wix
✦ Html/css/js website templates: use this option if you have at least some knowledge of html and wish to create a website quickly with a limited amount of information using the template you like most. Advanced users will most likely go for an open-source solution and adapt it to their needs or even create a website from scratch.
✦ Hardware solutions: such as NAS (Network Attached Storage)

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.