One-year ad-hoc education and research program

INTRO CORPORATE BIO ENTREPRENEURIAL BANKING STATS

Monthly Digest December 2011

Game|Changers Monthly Digest December 2011

Introduction Alumni information (2010-2011) Corporate track meetings Entrepreneurial and Ecosystems tracks meetings Bioinformatics track meetings Banking track meetings Additional information December Statistics Authors

© 2011 Game|Changers. Monthly Digest. Use of materials provided

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Game|Changers ad-hoc education and research program.

Game|Changers Monthly Digest. Dесember 2011.

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1. Introduction

This is an official Game|Changers ad-hoc education program digest containing information

about meetings and events we have organized and took part in and results we have

achieved during the month.

Game|Changers is a free one-year program for ad-hoc education and research of IT

business designed for 20 students. It also includes open innovations, business

development and HR platform for organizations and event series with the total expected

audience of 250-300 people.

The program has a main corporate track and additional tracks on some particular topics:

banking, bio-informatics, entrepreneurship, and ecosystems. The digest will be divided by

tracks, but there will be additional separation as well.

2. Alumni information (2010-2011)

We track previous year students’ achievements and involve

Game|Changers alumni in further program activities.

In the end of December 2011 Dina Chubareva left for a while

her position of analyst-intern in Yandex and moved to Finland

for half a year to study in LUT (Lappeenranta University of

Technologies) as an exchange student. During one semester

Dina will explore European educational model and take classes

mainly from 2 departments - IBTM (International Business and

Technology Management) and IT (Information technology).

3. Corporate track meetings

7th December, Taxes and Legal Issues, Government Relations, Deloitte

Experts: Vasily Markov (Senior Manager, Tax & Legal at Deloitte St. Petersburg)

During the meeting Vasily told us information related to taxes, government relations, legal

issues, and company structure focusing mostly on IT business, but telling some general

information as well.

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We got acquainted with different aspects of IT company operations in Russia and abroad,

court system and intellectual property regulations, and opportunities both for companies

and employees. Also we studied some approaches aimed to help companies to structure

their tax expenditure.

14th December, Homeworks Review and ReSearch(.), MTE QD

During this meeting most of the Game|Changers students presented results of personal

and group homework done within the program. Also we presented information on different

program tracks (Bio-informatics, Banking, Entrepreneurship, Ecosystem) in order to tell

everyone what we had been doing during the whole semester.

A few students also presented ideas of their graduate projects they are going to work on

during the second semester of the program starting in January.

We discussed plans for the next semester and talked about topics and events we are

interested in.

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21st December, IT Industry History, Graduate School of Management (GSOM)

Experts: Philipp Delgaydo (Chief Technology Officer at Start Up), Tatiana Gavrilova (Head

of Information Technologies in Management Department at Graduate School of

management, Saint-Petersburg State University).

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During the first part of the meeting we were given an overview of educational process at

Graduate School of Management by Tatiana Garanina, Director of Master in Management

Programs, and prof. Tatiana Gavrilova. They told us about departments, different

programs, education process, scoring system, place of GSOM in the education system

and other information, followed by an excursion.

During the second part we discussed Information Technologies History with Philipp and

Tatiana talking about the beginning of information technologies, process of industry

formation, and the biggest players on the market. Also we looked at different countries and

sectors of IT trying to understand what the future will be like and discussing different

scenarios of Information Technologies development. Every student received homework to

analyze IT in some country.

4. Entrepreneurial and Ecosystems tracks meetings

12th December, University Relations, EMC

Experts: Inga Petryaevskaya (Sr. Marketing and University Relations Program Manager at

EMC), Sergey Dmitriev (Director at Game|Changers program).

During the meeting experts told us about different aspects of company-university relations:

preparing new employees (Talent Acquisition and Employee Branding), Research

collaboration and cooperation (when a company is interested in making research in some

field but is not able do it inside for some reason), Sales (company is interested in making

its products popular and to do this it supplies universities with its products or works on

ecosystem – evangelistic direction).

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5. Bioinformatics track meetings

2th December, JetBrains, Biofuels

Lecture summary: every participant presented own part of homework on biofuels. Maxim

started with discussing contemporary biofuel and its problems of mass implementation.

Olga told about next generation biofuels that are much more environmentally friendly.

Alexandra presented future biofuels trends that are focused on creating synthetic

petroleum that is almost similar to natural one. Also, Alexandra made an overview of

biofuel policy in Germany and UK.

At the end of the meeting we discussed the sequencing quest, made division of quest

parts focusing on making these parts equal in volume of work load and students’

involvement. Also we planned all December topics and meetings schedule.

8th December, AU RAS extra event

The lecture was held by Anna Lapidus (PhD in biology and bioinformatics). Anna came to

St.-Petersburg for one week to present the topic “Genome assembly and finishing” for AU

master students in bioinformatics. In addition, Anna told us about her research projects.

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14th December, ITMO Sequencing methods quest presentation

Three sequencing methods were presented for Game|Changers. Biotrack students told

about Sanger sequencing, new generation sequencing and microarray sequencing taking

into consideration strong points and drawbacks of every method. Sequencing equipment

and genome business issues were observed as well. The audience was demonstrated a

small part of virtual laboratory work on DNA chipping.

16th December, JetBrains, Quiz

Lecture summary: the meeting started with business writing discussion held by Sergey

Dmitriev. Taking as an example a written letter to 23andMe, Sergey advised several ways

to make it shorter and clearer. Next, we discussed the biotrack quest presentation and

clarified some confusing points. Then, a quiz on molecular biology methods and genomics

was distributed. The quiz was successfully done by Olga Yanyuk and Alexandra

Vachnadze. Good quiz results enabled them to participate in laboratory work which took

place several days later in “Alkor-Bio” laboratory. Homework: Genetic modified organisms,

recombinant DNA.

18th December, AlkorBio, Wet Lab

Laboratory work summary: we were met by Arseniy Smirnov, Alkor Bio scientist. At the

beginning, Arseniy gathered biological material (saliva) from all participants and put it in

individual test tubes. Then, he presented slides with overview of microbiology

fundamentals, DNA structure, sequencing methods and so on. After the presentation, we

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took a small tour around the laboratory and met laboratory assistant who demonstrated

and taught us how to extract DNA molecules from saliva samples using special tools such

as medicine dropper, centrifuges and vertex. After that our DNA samples were extracted

and ready so we moved on to the sequencing device. We participated in special gel

preparation and put our samples on the gel platform. Then, electrophoresis was conducted

and we saw our DNA traces. Later on each DNA trace will be analyzed on an SNP (single

nucleotide polymorphism), which shows peculiarities of blood coagulability.

6. Banking track meetings

19th December, Personal Finance Services, Yandex

The last meeting in the first semester was held on 19 December in Yandex. Our topic was

Personal Finance Services (PF). We had two main speakers - Anton Fedosin and

Vladimir Gorovoy. Anton told us about his own start-up ZenMoney. His lecture was about

russian and foreign PF-services, about the road-map of his own project. Vladimir is the

product manager of Yandex.Uslugi, so he told us about the project team and their work. At

the end of the meeting Anton and Vladimir shared their experience of collaboration with

banks. Than we discussed the most possible ways of progress in this area.

7. Recommended and Co-located events

We had 6 recommended and co-located events in December.

December 1st:Hi-Meeting with A. Gavrilov at ITMO, organized by Microsoft.

December 2nd: WebReady 2011 at Ingria.

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December 6th: tbd2 “OpenData” with Ivan Begtin at MTE QD, organized by CFE,

Game|Changers.

December 6th: Technology Entrepreneurship training at Ingria, organized by Ingria.

December 17th: Yandex PLAN B conference at Yandex, organized by Yandex.

December 21st: IT Industry History at GSOM, organized by Game|Changers.

December 22nd: Event Management as Marketing at 'Spasibo' Shop, organized by

BootstrapFund.

8. Additional information

From December we launched a new format of meetings at Game|Changers program -

mentoring meetings, when curators and experts meet students in order to discuss together

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students' graduate projects, which we are going to prepare during the second semester of

the program. In December we had about 10 meeting of this kind.

During December we had 2 social events related to the end of 2011 year. On 25th

December Alumni 2010-2011 organized joint Game|Changers meeting in the bar. During

the New Year night some of Game|Changers students and curators gathered in the flat at

Vasilievsky Island in order to celebrate New Year together.

9. December Statistics

• 10 meetings

• 9 different places to meet

• 8 key guests

• 6 recommended and co-located events

• 10 group project mentoring meetings

• 2 social events

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10. Authors

Digest prepared by Mikhail Vink, Media Relations. E-Mail: Mikhail.Vink@gamechangers.ru

Bioinformatics track information prepared by Alexandra Vachnadze.

Banking track information prepared by Valery Sizikova.

Editors: Olga Barshay (English), Sergey Karashevich(Design), Sergey Dmitriev(General).