📣 Skoltech is now a partner of an international AI ethics conference taking place in Qatar.

The conference, “AI Ethics: The Convergence of Technology and Diverse Moral Traditions,” will be held in Al Rayyan at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. It is set to become a key platform for dialogue among the world’s leading experts in technology, philosophy, law, and policy.

The program features a presentation by Professor Ivan Tyukin from Skoltech AI. On September 29, the scientist will contribute to a session noscriptd “AI and the Changing Face of Care: Empathy, Professional Identity, and Human Connection,” where he will join colleagues to discuss how artificial intelligence is transforming the sphere of human care.

📽 Check out our atmospheric video about the final week of the Innovation Workshop! During the last five days, students refined their ideas, prepared for public presentations before mentors, and got ready for the long-awaited final project defense.

It had everything: the tension before stepping on stage, the joy of applause, and the pride in their team. ✨

🆕 Skoltech scientists, together with colleagues from the Institut Pasteur and the University of Lorraine (France), studied the recently discovered bacterial immune system known as PARIS. This system helps microbes defend themselves against viruses, and understanding its mechanisms opens new opportunities for developing phage therapy — an alternative to antibiotics in which bacterial infections are treated with viruses. The research was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and supported by the Russian Science Foundation.

Svetlana Belukhina, the first author of the study and a PhD student in Skoltech’s Life Sciences program, explained the results:
“In this study, we have refined our understanding of the interaction between phages and the PARIS immune system in multiple ways. First, we have shown that PARIS attacks three tRNAs, not just one. This is consistent with the way certain toxins work. Second, it’s been confirmed that replacing the attacked tRNAs is sufficient for a virus to escape PARIS. Third, we have demonstrated that this protection is merely a matter of several mutations: Even closely related phage strains that are very much alike may or may not carry the necessary ‘replacement tRNAs’ to escape PARIS. You can’t tell in advance by looking at the viral genome.”

The findings will help deepen our understanding of the evolutionary “arms race” between bacteria and viruses and bring us closer to developing more effective methods of phage therapy.

📚 In our #book section by a mentor of the "Innovation Workshop," we have a new recommendation! Today, the book is recommended by Alexey Salimon, Assistant Professor at Skoltech, Center for Digital Engineering:

The book's noscript, "Materials and Design," speaks for itself. It's an excellent introduction to the world of materials science and engineering design. The author shows how the properties of materials are directly linked to the products we can create and how to make choices that are both practical and innovative. Simply a "must-read."

📍 For participants of the Innovation Workshop, this book is a great helper when creating prototypes and selecting materials for their projects. The book pays a lot of attention to the cost of materials and processes, their performance, and will suggest how best to package a product for the end-user, which is critical for any startup.

✨ We can’t believe the Innovation Workshop is already over!

Over the past month, students not only got to know Skoltech, but also found like-minded peers, completed intensives under the guidance of mentors, created their own projects, and learned how to present their ideas in the best possible way.

Let’s relive these moments together — all the photos are now available in our VK album. 📸

💡Last week, Skoltech took part in the Artificial Intelligence Day dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the Skolkovo Innovation Center.

A Skoltech delegation led by President Alexander Kuleshov introduced seven AI-based developments to Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and Chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation Board of Trustees:

1. Forecasting ice conditions in the Arctic using AI. A system that provides operational three-day forecasts of weather, ocean, and ice conditions along the Northern Sea Route. The service will soon be launched for open access, with subnoscription-based access to real-time forecasts.
2. Software for enhancing the resolution of satellite images and recognizing target objects. The solution is based on generative AI and allows for a four-fold increase in image detail. It is implemented by the Sputniks company.
3. Forecasting the probability of wildfires. Algorithms that forecast fire risks using remote sensing data, meteorological information, and terrain characteristics. The solution is currently undergoing operational use within the framework of the Ministry of Emergency Situations under a special license.
4. Identifying the source of atmospheric emissions. A tool for rapidly identifying sources of emissions, designed for use in environmental monitoring and industrial safety.
5. Detecting AI-generated texts by internal language structure. A multilingual system that distinguishes between human- and AI-written texts by analyzing the internal structure of language. Applicable for checking student work, media materials, and protecting against disinformation.
6. “Aging Clock.” An application for assessing biological age based on clinical and epigenetic data, currently used in clinical practice by the Russian Gerontology Research and Clinical Center.
7. “E-nose.” A sensor device for odor analysis with applications in security, the food industry, and transportation.

The AI Day also featured a strategic dialogue on the future of artificial intelligence in Russia and worldwide, bringing together more than 700 representatives of science, business, and government from leading research centers, major corporations, and state institutions.

💡 Skoltech teams showcased their projects at the Moscow Startup Summit, organized by the Moscow Government in collaboration with Sber.

The summit’s pitch sessions and exhibition featured the following Skoltech-born startups:

🔸 Labadvance — a developer of solutions for using microfluidic chips in the oil and gas industry and medicine.
🔸 NeurOmix — the world’s first omics platform for diagnosing mental and cognitive health.
🔸 Monisensa — a virtual energy audit system designed to improve energy efficiency and reduce the number of meters and sensors in use.
🔸 Digital Materials — a company creating fundamentally new materials and technologies.

Hydrocom delivered a pitch at the Youth Tech Startup Demo Day, where the jury included Viktor Vekselberg, the chairman of Skoltech’s Board of Trustees. Hydrocom is developing an innovative underwater communication system for divers.

Skoltech Professor Alexey Cheremisin from the Petroleum Center joined a public discussion on how to make the journey from researcher to company founder, sharing the story of building Labadvance — from the first ideas to methods of supporting and scaling them.

Watch the recordings of the presentations here: Labadvance, NeurOmix, Monisensa, Digital Materials, and Hydrocom.

⚡️ Wrapping up the InteRussia Fellowship at Skoltech

From September 1st, graduates of leading universities and aspiring researchers from Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, India, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Serbia, South Africa, Turkey, and Vietnam undertook training in the intensive "Innovation Workshop" course on technological entrepreneurship.

Over the course of a month, these young specialists from 12 countries went through the full cycle of product development — from the initial idea to a functional prototype. The projects were presented and defended before an expert jury comprising representatives from Skoltech and partner organizations. Several projects with InteRussia fellows were among the winners.

The InteRussia fellowship program for foreign specialists in STEM is implemented by the Mezhdunarodniki Autonomous Non-Profit Organization in cooperation with the Gorchakov Fund, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, and the Directorate of the World Youth Festival, with support from the ABS Electro Charitable Foundation and the Presidential Grants Foundation.

🔍 Researchers from the Engineering Center’s Hierarchically Structured Materials Laboratory have collaborated with colleagues from MISIS University and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and made a first-ever observation in real time of how a “smart” material — ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene — recovers its shape when heated. The study was published in the journal Physical Mesomechanics.

To observe these processes, the scientists conducted a unique experiment: They heated a sample directly under an X-ray beam and tracked the rearrangement of the material’s structure with nanometer precision.

“Our experiment is like shooting an ultraslow-motion video of how the material’s invisible nanostructure ‘comes to life’ and starts moving upon heating,” says the study’s first author, Research Scientist Evgeny Statnik from the Hierarchically Structured Materials Laboratory at Skoltech Engineering. “We didn’t just record the changes — we linked them directly to the material’s macroscopic property. Now we can propose, not empirically but in a targeted way, how to modify the polymer’s structure to achieve the desired shape memory effect.”

The results of the work pave the way for new technologies and materials with “programmable” properties, ranging from miniature medical devices, “artificial muscles,” and smart implants to powerful actuators for robotics and energy-harvesting systems.

🤝 Skoltech has hosted an international foresight session on artificial intelligence.

The event, which brought together researchers, engineers, and industry partners, included a plenary session and three thematic working groups: Architectures, Algorithms and Mathematics; Foundational and Generative Models; and Governance, Decision-Making and Multi-Agent Systems. Each group involved international experts from China, the United Kingdom, and India.

Grigory Kabatyansky, Skoltech Vice President: "Foresight is an excellent opportunity to align scientific priorities with industry needs. We conducted the session using the methodology of the Ministry of Economic Development: in person, across three working groups, and with colleagues holding foreign affiliations – for the independent validation of approaches and to ensure metric comparability with global practices. These results will form the basis for practical implementations and joint analytical materials and will be updated annually together with our partners."

The foresight session concluded with the consolidation of "roadmaps" for the coming year: a package of benchmarks and trust metrics was formed, a list of pilot projects for industry, energy, transport, and healthcare with KPIs for accuracy, robustness, and total cost of ownership was defined, and requirements for training and inference infrastructure were described.

The session was coordinated by the Strategic Agency for the Support and Formation of AI Developments (SAPFIR) as part of the International AI Foresight initiative conducted in 2025.

🆕 Skoltech researchers have investigated the way the composition of small molecules called lipids and metabolites varies in the brain in the first hours and days after death. This research was published in the journal Biomolecules and was supported by the Russian Science Foundation.

Marina Zavolskova, a research intern and a PhD student of the Life Sciences program at Skoltech “Lipids and metabolites, too, could be of use. For example, our colleagues recently reported headway in measuring the lipid levels in the blood of patients with schizophrenia and depression, but analyzing brain tissue is more challenging, because you only get the sample after the death of a patient, and you never know which of the observed effects are due to the disease and which are due to tissue decay. Well, you do know the latter now.”

Looking at samples from humans, mice, and rats, the study considered the levels of nearly 1,000 small molecules. By showing most of them to be fairly stable over the first 48 hours and documenting the transformations undergone by the rest, the work opens the way for further research that could establish the brain-based molecular footprint of schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and other mental and neurological disorders, whose underlying biology remains poorly understood.

🆕 Researchers from Skoltech and HSE University have developed a photovoltaic cell for powering wireless temperature and humidity sensors that does not require recharging. The development was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), and the results were published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

"In this work, we demonstrated that a perovskite-based photovoltaic cell, when properly protected from the environment, can effectively function as a charger for wireless sensors. This opens up new possibilities for the application of perovskite photovoltaic cell, which can utilize not only solar energy but also artificial light. In the future, we plan to develop a photovoltaic cell integrated with a supercapacitor into a single device," says Alexandra Boldyreva, a Research Scientist at the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology, Candidate of Chemical Sciences, and principal investigator of the RSF-funded project.

Such devices could become an eco-friendly alternative to traditional power sources—a safe replacement for batteries containing toxic substances like mercury and cadmium.