“Russia, Institute, Department and Me” - the second part of an interview with Anatoly Abramovich Shalyto, Professor at ITMO University

A month ago, the first part of a large interview with Anatoly Abramovich Shalyto, Professor, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Head of the Department of Programming Technologies at ITMO University, winner of the Government of Russia prize in the field of education.



Your attention is the second part of this interview. This is what we talked about:

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• what should be done so that graduates remain to work in their university;
• how to change the education financing model;
• as olympiad champions they tried to take them into scientific companies;
• the cost of laboratory mice;
• the direction of bioinformatics at ITMO University;
• Oleg Tinkov’s lecture to students;
• attitude towards Anatoly Abramovich among his graduates.

Text transcript - under the cut.

Giving graduates

Though we are university teachers, we can find employees just as well as a personnel agency. Especially before, I did it well, because I worked a lot with the guys, sat for hours, did coursework projects, etc., and now I don’t, because I’ve been disappointed in the guys.



Now, at the first lecture, I say that I am engaged only in those who are interested in Russia, the institute, the department and me. And those who are interested only in themselves, Eindhoven, Google - this is not for me. Neither with Putin, nor with Medvedev, nor with Vasilyev, nor with any Philips, any Google - nobody agreed, nobody offered compensation or the help. Moreover, it is impossible to accept help from foreigners in general now, because they can be recognized as “agents” for it. In general, this is all some kind of murk. I understand, JetBrains - help, and what's that? We passed that stage a long time ago to be proud that our graduates took a job at Google, for example.



Some time ago Rukshin held a round table on the topic of gifted children at ITAR-TASS. And there, the city’s education authorities talked about how all is well. Pratusevich (Maxim Yakovlevich Pratusevich, Director of the Presidential Physics and Mathematics Lyceum No. 239 - told the author) told how well they have. Parents, whose children study at 239, told how well their children study there.



And then (for this purpose, apparently, Rukshin called me) gave me the floor. And I said that there are gifted children, they go to a good school, at 239 or somewhere else of this or similar level, and the children are happy. They are in a beautiful setting. And how parents are satisfied! In a wonderful setting with good teachers. And free, unlike America. My graduates tell me that there are no schools, or sports sections, or chess at a level like ours. In America, of course, they do exist, but for some immense money. Well, there is no such as in 239, for free. And the teachers are happy! They then become deserved, so Pratusevich was the best school principal in Russia, and for several years now the lyceum has been the best school in the country. Also good.



Then the children enter the university. To us, for example, but I will tell you later about us. And the teacher of this university says that they cook very well, because their graduates leave for Google and Facebook. So, the graduates are good, and he is good.



So it's some kind of criminal activity! It seems everyone is happy: children are happy, parents are happy, school teachers ... And does Russia have to do with it? And the state has something to do with it? We don’t give anything to anyone: no bread, no flat, no car, no mug right here (points to a mug - author's note). And even medicine is now far from being always free ... But for some reason, we are giving graduates, starting with our private companies and ending with foreign ones.

Olympiadniki and scientific companies

There was a generally blatant case when in 2013 we became the fourth or fifth time world champions in programming. At that time, a meeting was held with Minister Shoigu on education, apparently, about scientific companies. And now he announced that now the guys from ITMO University have become world champions, we should take them to the army. And the chase began for them. And I saved them from this chase ...



- Listen, but it sounds like full of wildness.



- It turned out to be complete wildness: Korotkevich cannot be taken away - he is a citizen of Belarus. Kever disappeared somewhere and could not get through to him. I negotiated with Niyaz Nigmatullin’s mother, who was in Tatarstan. When they came for him, he was at the Universiade, and then we urgently accepted him to the magistracy, which gives us a reservation. And the scandal began on the Internet. A colonel from Kazan said he would call on him the All-Russian wanted list. What is wanted? He was at that moment, like Kever, a two-time world champion. Apparently, no one else to look for.



A day later, the situation was discharged, Shoigu invited Vasilyev to the office, they talked about companies, they did not talk about champions. Moreover, Vasilyev had to go somewhere in Moscow, and Shoigu told him: “You will not have time, now - take my car”.



- It all ended well.



- Everything ended well, they were not taken anywhere. Why? Because they were undergraduates or foreigners, they cannot be taken anywhere. When we reached the colonel, who wanted to declare the search, to the general, Commissar of Kazan, we had already sent a fax to Niyaz Nigmatull’s mother that he had been accepted to the magistracy. And he says: “And who is he?”, - “Two-time world champion in programming and master!” - “So where can we take it?”



What do I want to say? I have great respect for the Russian army, but why does it have a priority over the ITMO State University? As a state university, we prepare for the army and for all other state enterprises and organizations (including for ourselves) highly qualified specialists. Why should one state organization have a priority over another? And I’m not talking about private at all.

On public finance and education on credit

And therefore, in order for the state to have a future, there must be funding in school, medicine, and universities, so that university graduates want to work there. And here I proposed to introduce a socially-oriented paid education in universities. About this, I recently published a large article "Where are you not paying off?" In the "St. Petersburg Vedomosti". Socially-oriented in the sense that it is not parents who pay, but children after graduation, but they pay not “from the father”, but from the salary.



This would immediately solve at least two problems: keep the departure until it paid off. I'm not talking about such amounts as at Harvard - there are 50 thousand dollars a year or more, and I offer only three thousand euros per year, as in Tartu and Tallinn - 210 thousand rubles a year. This is also not sugar - in six years it is recruited 1.2 million. Even if you receive a salary of 100,000 from a third year working as a programmer, then you need to do it in at least one and a half or two years. Well, then maybe the heat will decrease.



I have already said that today there should be 12 students per teacher. The student pays 18 thousand rubles a month (this is how much an average assistant professor gets in the country). So, if five of the 12 students give money to this associate professor, plus the state will give 18 thousand, and more than 100 thousand will turn out. And if this does not take taxes until the age of 30-35, people have written to me that they will come running from the West to study and teach in the university for over 100 thousand. But this thing is unconstitutional, because the Constitution says: "Budget education on a competitive basis." That's all I can say.



- You see, 100 thousand rubles a month for a teacher is probably good, but for a programmer, this is probably not very big money.



- Right. For different things you have to pay differently. Here, for example, working in a university, my guys are mainly engaged in science or teaching and Olympiads. They say to me or Parfenov: “We left to conduct Vseros among schoolchildren ...”. Because you can't do without our guys, they are professionals in this field. In no company will they be given such freedom, well, they will let them go once or twice, and then, most likely, everything will work. And here the guys do what they like, and for this they may need to receive two times less money than when working for an “uncle” in the industry.

Instructors and laboratory mice

You know, there is Copeland's book, Slaves of Microsoft. We have them to some extent free people, and in companies they are subject to the authorities. But for everything in life you have to pay: family life, and in this case - a lower salary. But the salary should be decent, and therefore it is normal that it is less than in industry, but not 18 thousand, as the state pays.



I will now say the thing from which it will become terrible. We are engaged in bioinformatics. Once a Russian professor from America told me that a laboratory mouse for researching cancer immunity costs 18 thousand rubles. Is the analogy clear?



- Unfortunately, it is understandable.



- I think that we will be watched by company representatives, and they will understand that we are not laboratory mice. So, I may be approaching a laboratory mouse, but I have a pension. But you want me not to teach your future employees, but talented young people. So help us with all your might, and then you and us will work great specialists. And do not say that you pay taxes and this is not your problem. Yours! Same as ours.



- How realistic is it? Is it utopia?



- Wait, what utopia? We have implemented everything.



- And how does it work?



- I'll tell you now. So, in order for the strong guys to remain an institution of higher education, it is necessary, in my opinion, to take into account three factors. First, there are three types of wages: unworthy, decent and decent. Unworthy - who pays it, you can guess. Decent - almost every one of our guys went on an internship on Google or Facebook or was on an internship in our cool companies and knows how much they will pay there. And we have to pay a decent salary, okay? Strong children, from students to senior lecturers of young people (the oldest senior lecturer is 36 years old), we pay from 15 to 150 thousand. But no one bothers to earn more, for example, by winning grants, which they, by virtue of their talent, constantly win. This is the first.



Secondly - you need to treat them like your children, so that they feel that this is a team, a family. In a team of 50 people this can be done.



But the main thing is the third, which nobody has, as it seems to me. They say that JetBrains have it, but I don’t know for sure. But it is known about Google that they work for the company 80% of the time, and in some sense they can work for themselves 20% of the time: either read lectures, or ... I don’t know how they negotiate with the company. From time to time they are allowed or not allowed. And our proportion is inverse.



- I two years ago on this topic with Andrei Ivanov (senior vice president for investment, research and educational projects in the company JetBrains - approx. Aut.).



- And what did he say?



- Said it is, but only 10% of employees use this opportunity.



- Well, maybe ... About the second company I said - this is Google. There it is, it is not.



- In Google it is, but almost no one uses it.



- That's it. And with us you are 20% working for a university, and 80% for yourself, being engaged in teaching what you like, olympiads and science. Those who understand the advantage of these 80% remain with us. And for those who do not understand, or who do not have the desire to do science, Olympiads or have no idea to start a startup, of course, you have to sell yourself somewhere, in good conditions and as expensive as possible.



- If you really sell yourself, then sell normally.



- And for us the stated works. Now the question arises how it works financially. It's very simple - I advise everyone so much. If you have strong guys, then you can do and win anything.

What can a young employee do at a university?

I will give an example of one of the possible options for making money. For talented students, we always conducted free programming courses. Today, they are asked for eight thousand per semester. Well, I think that there will be no end to those who wish. Eight thousand rubles a semester is to be able to pay teachers.



In general, what can you do at the department in the university? Four things. The first is teaching, the second is innovation, with this we don’t really (later I’ll say two words about it), the third is science, the fourth is Olympiad. By the way, I hope everything is clear with the olympiads: many people know about our achievements and the fact that we hold olympiads of all levels - both school and non-school. Now, by the way, our employee, the world champion of 2004, Pavel Mavrin was on the organizing committee of the World School Olympiad in Informatics, which was in Iran. There was a very interesting moment. There were allowed 300 people from different countries except Israel, which, according to the organizers, does not exist. But since he is still there, the Israeli team arrived in Kazan, in which this Olympiad took place the previous year. But Israel in Iran is so "loved" that the results of the Israelis did not even affect the scoreboard of the competitions, and therefore the general table was reduced in Holland.



By the way, at the last Olympiad in Kazan, our guys were responsible for ensuring that all 350 computers worked and solutions were automatically tested. Georgy Korneev with the company (three more people - one of our graduate-olympiadnik from Google came) had to make these 350 computers work. And for a long time, due to organizational problems, it was not clear how to do this. Therefore, I went with the guys to negotiate with the representative of the President of Tatarstan here in Leningrad to help us there. He answered all the questions: “Everything is always good in Tatarstan, it will turn out now.”



He was right, but Korneev didn’t get a heart attack there. But it did. I’m telling you that in order for us to conduct both school and other olympiads, there should be a team of intelligent people who don’t ask anyone, but they should notify everyone and go to do business, and they should not be hungry and cold. For this, in particular, need help. So this is the first.



The second is science. About science, I can just say that last year we took 56th place in Computer Science rated by Times Higher Education, overtaking many of the world's famous universities. This was not only provided by our laboratory, the University still has two laboratories working in this direction. The leaders are A. Bukhanovsky and A. Bobtsov.



These international laboratories were created under the “5-100” program, which is heavily funded. And every six months there is a struggle for this money between the universities, and the last two or three times we were among the winners of the program, overtaking, in particular, our Polytech. Then the fight goes on inside the university between the laboratories. Winning laboratories receive substantial money, and they are the material basis for those guys who stayed with us to do science. Therefore, they do not leave us anywhere.



Our leadership takes 10-15%, and everything else goes only to the laboratory. The management does not take it to itself, there is a lot of expenses - just at least even for these T-shirts (“IT's MOre than a University” - author's note). The university itself looks different, it’s necessary to carry out repairs, and the hostel needs to be repaired. It is also impossible: the university is becoming known in the world, and there will be bad conditions in the hostel. Therefore, it is necessary to spend a lot of money all the time.



When we started in 2013 under the “5-100” program, then we had 200 articles per year per institute, which are visible in the international databases Web of Science and Scopus. And on the 20th year Vasiliev took, in my opinion, three thousand publications indexed in these databases - 15 times more. Now we have two thousand. And now these two thousand are divided into 40 laboratories, and an average of 40-50 publications per year are obtained. Not necessarily articles, these may also be conference materials. There should also be joint international programs with universities that are part of the 400 best universities in the world and theses defense - and all this is considered at the relevant commissions. This money goes only to those who participate in it, they pay nothing for teaching there.



And, since the guys are very strong, we win various grants. In addition, companies help us, especially JetBrains. As a result, very good guys and girls remain at the department - and several years ago we already had six people left right away ...



- With the release?



- With one issue, four of them have already defended their Ph.D. dissertations, and one has dumped into Google after an outstanding publication in the journal Nature Genetic (naturally, in collaboration), which shook me deeply - I thought it was just the beginning for him in science, but it all ended quickly . And Lida Perovskaya, who is now known in the city for working in Yandex and with us, and helping to conduct all the Olympiads. We also have four world champions in programming, one of whom is double, as well as two winners of this championship.



With such forces, we can win all sorts of grants that exist only in Russia: the Foundation for Basic Research, the Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Science, and carried out within the framework of the federal targeted programs. The stronger the guys in the “shop”, the more grants we win, there is money for teaching, Olympiads and science, and if even against this background companies such as JetBrains and Yandex help, then we can have 15 young people qualified teachers and scholars under the age of 36, and several dozen students who work with us, and we must pay wages.



I recently visited the Higher School of Economics at a meeting on IT education, which was initiated by PostgreSQL Professonal. There, the deputy dean of mekhmata of Moscow State University asked me how we deal with the old men. They seem to be retired to be escorted, and Sadovnichy is against it, because they have been with him all their lives. I say: “We don’t have them at the department - only I and Parfenov, and even then we have the first number in the age - six. Guys believe that they still need us very much. We are active. Of the rest, the oldest is Stankevich, 36 years old. ”



And all the others are even younger, because all the time our teachers worked part-time until we raised our teachers, scientists and organizers of the Olympiads, and we are going to do it further. We have an outstanding graduate in the field of physics Pasha Belov. He says all the time that there must be mobility, as in the West, that he moved from there to there. I said: “Well, only the“ scientific schools ”, with which they were so proud in Russia and the USSR, cannot exist then.” And in the late 60s-70s. The most important place on earth in the field of mathematics was the 13th and 14th floors of Moscow State University, and no one went anywhere. And Budker at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences had many world-class scientists, and no one went anywhere.



- But there is, for example, the mechanism of postdocs.



- I am not against all this, but it is not necessary. Nobody went anywhere, only sometimes at a conference, and it all lived and worked. Today, everyone in the world goes somewhere and every four years they change jobs, until they become full professors. Therefore, they have no scientific schools, and I fight to have one.



In short, we are actively engaged in three of the above four areas of work. In accordance with the requirements of the “5-100” program, we have the greatest interest only in those studies whose results can be published and reported at international conferences, and not just solved practical problems.

Bioinformatics at ITMO University

Our main scientific achievements are connected with bioinformatics or, to put it more broadly, with system biology in the field of cancer immunity. It turned out that here you need to have serious knowledge in computer science and programming to solve clustering problems, etc. In 2010, I met at meetings of Nobel laureates at Zhores Ivanovich Alferov with Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Georgievich Scriabin (he is an academician in the third generation). And he said to him: “Let's work together: I give our young programmers, and you give young biologists. And let's collect the genome. “Let's go,” he said. In general, I came to work, everyone began to laugh at me: “What kind of biologist are you, what kind of biologists are you here, some kind of nonsense.” It ended up we did the original genome collector.



- This is a separate laboratory involved, right?



- This is a group in the lab. An open collector of the genome, which has no analogue in the world. There is one, but it is paid. Everything in the world is collected on clusters, in the clouds and under Linux, and we decided to do a collector for doctors: for personal computers under Windows. It is used to assemble genes of bacteria and viruses abroad, scientists who do not want to go to Amazon, but want to open personal and start working. It’s impossible to say that we did a great job, but the guys were so formed in the field of bioinformatics that later, when we met Maxim Artyomov from Donetsk, who graduated from Moscow State University in chemistry, and now is an associate professor at the University of Washington in St. Louis, then joint activities started right away. He quickly understood the level of my children, and we went to systems biology on some absolutely incredible level. And they went to such publications that I never dreamed of: in the journals Science, Cell, Immunity, Molecular Cell, etc.



Of course, there were not only my guys there - in each article 10-15 authors from MIT, Harvard, from St. Louis, clinics of Boston. And the words "ITMO University" began to sound often. In each article of our one or two graduates, graduate students or students. And this solved the problem of financing within the framework of the 5-100 program, because when I said that we needed 40-50 publications per year, at first they only needed to be indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, and now - so that publications were in well cited publications.



There is such an indicator SJR - this is the citation index in the considered area. Here we are now set an average of 40 publications SJR, equal to 0.9 - it is necessary to dial 36 in the amount. But to collect this amount only by computer science is incredibly difficult. For example, recently the 2009 World Programming Champion Maxim Buzdalov, along with the French professor Benjamin Deyer, received the Best Paper at the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2017) in the theoretical section. But there SJR in the conference proceedings, which collect 600-700 people from all over the world, is zero ! All "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" from Springer - 0.3. If 40 is multiplied by 0.3, then it turns out 12, but not 36 at all. If we didn’t have system biology results, then we would have already flown out of the 5-100 program, and many guys would have left us.



I, apparently, a little bit crazy. Or maybe not a little bit, if you brought such a boy as Lesha Sergushechev, not to the position of a “programmer”, for example, in Google, but to such an insanity as Ff Skoltech on system biology. Moreover, this title was given to only five scientists under 35 years old in the country. There were six people in the commission, two of whom are not ordinary guys who came from America - Vladimir Gelfand (the grandson of the great mathematician Gelfand) and Konstantin Severinov, who commands three laboratories - two in Russia and one in America.



He wanted to leave, but, unlike others, only in one place on earth - Boston, where studies on cancer immunity are performed at the highest level, and not at all on Google or wherever they take, but to a specific place.



I note that Lesha graduated from our Department of Computer Technology, and not bioinformatics or systems biology. He recently won a big grant with me. As a result, he did not go anywhere, remained on a permanent job at our department. Why should he go somewhere, when he is here at a normal salary, no one bothers to do what he wants. He can, for example, sit in America as much as he wants, and all he has to do is write ITMO University through a comma in affiliation and that's it. However, since he has wonderful guys here, he is mostly with us. The activities of Lesha and his children contributed to the fact that our university recently hit the list of the rising stars of the journal Nature.



And we have Arina Buzdalova, Maxim's wife, who will now defend her thesis. She was not an olympiad, but now employers are searching through search engines not only for olympiad programmers, but also for many others. So, a year ago, she received an invitation for an interview from Google. She thought it was spam. She was repeated. And she answered the way I would like most of my graduates to answer: “I am engaged in science at ITMO University. If it’s Google Research, then we can talk, and if it’s just Google, it’s not for me. ” And they disappeared, because Google Research seems to be recruiting staff in a completely different way. So I want my graduates often to answer this way.



JetBrains now has JetBrains Research . We have two laboratories there. It helps us a lot. At the same time, it must be remembered that the company's assistance is mainly aimed at ensuring that there is “no scorched earth” in St. Petersburg around it.

Graduate entrepreneurs

- What about entrepreneurship?



- This is the case with business: we are not directly involved in this. At the university, they do it, but we don’t. Until recently, everyone sarcastically asked what success your graduates in industry have achieved. Before, I had to say four words: “software for Yota”. He was created by a team led by Sasha Shtuchkin, which I helped recruit when my daughter Inna (she worked as the content director at Scartel) brought Denis Sverdlov and Igor Shirokov to the department. , , , 2003 . . Yota, . HTC, , , , .



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