WHAT WILL THE YEAR 2018 BE LIKE?

The main novelty of the season in the program portfolio of the Foundation is the educational grants for Master’s Degree courses. The initiators of the competition program were the founders of the foundation Galimzhan Yessenov and Aizhan Yessim.  The competition starts on the 2nd of April. Fourth year students or working young scientists with a degree not higher than a bachelor’s one and graduated within the last 5 years are welcome to participate. It is important that they do scientific research in technical and natural sciences. They should have an invitation to study at any Master’s Degree course in foreign universities in their field. The minimum required GPA should be higher than 3.3 points. Due to the high cost of such education which can reach several tens of thousands of dollars or euros, and because it is a new program for us, this year the Foundation will cover only 2 educational grants. We are talking about a one-year master’s degree course.

Moreover, we are modernizing the format of the program “Research Internships in Laboratories in the UK” that was successfully launched last year. Now it transformed into “Internships for specialists and undergraduates in the laboratories of the world”. We accept applications starting from January 8. As previously, we are planning to provide five winners with grants for internships, but not only in Britain but also in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. What makes this program different from the one that has existed for five years — meaning the “Research Internships in the World Laboratories”, you ask. The difference is that it’s target audience includes not 2-3-year students, but primarily working researchers (with a degree not higher than the master’s one), and additionally graduate bachelors or Master’s degree students. In the framework of this program a young scientist himself needs to find the laboratory engaged in research similar to what he or she is doing. We will pay for the internship, stay, flights and accommodation, as well as other related expenses. There will be 5 grants in total.

In February, we will celebrate our fifth anniversary, and the yearly meeting with participants of our programs – students and professionals – will be devoted to anniversary. It is traditionally held on the eve of Nauryz, in the midst of March. The program of the meeting this year is going to be intensive, useful, interesting because, as a rule, the part of the meeting is organized in a form of a training session.

During our anniversary year, we are planning to launch another large project — Yessenov Data Lab summer school. We are planning to implement it in cooperation with Alma University which will be the base for the school. The main mission of the laboratory will be to develop the Kazakhstanis’ competence in the field of data analysis. At the moment, this direction is actively developing all over the world. According to some specialists, working with large volume of information is the most demanded profession in the next decade and the demand for specialists in the field of data science is now far exceeding the supply. We also know that Kazakhstan has a lot of strong engineers and mathematicians who could do data analytics. This prompted us to implement the idea of such a program. 20 professionals with IT background will be studying at the Yessenov Data Lab school. Educational process will be conducted in two directions: for IT programmers and managers of IT projects. Upon completion of the educational course, the students will work with cases of Kazakhstan companies in the field of banking, Internet sales and telecommunications.

The programs and projects of the Foundation that have existed for several years — such as “Research Internships in the World Laboratories”, “Internships in IT startups of the United States”, “Yessenov Lectures”, Scholarship program, “New Year Wish Tree”, the English language program etc. — will be held in the same format and mode in 2018.

The Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation will continue to sponsor the Kazakhstan Chess Federation, and thus national and international chess tournaments will be organized in the country. The program “Chess in School” will be expanded and we are pleased to announce that in addition to Kyzylorda, Pavlodar regions and Almaty city, already involved in the project since September 2017, North Kazakhstan region will join the project as well and several other regions also consider such possibility.