Kairat Tilegen

1. How did it happen that you became interested in IT and why did you choose this speciality?

It all started with PC games and then began to turn, as it often happens into reality. When I was in the first grade, the parents had opened a computer club, I spent a lot of time there and began to disassemble and repair computers. In 8th grade I became acquainted with the computer language C++ and some time later wrote my first software. By the time of graduation of secondary school I knew for sure that my future will certainly be connected to IT.

2. What was the most complex and interesting in the grant competition carried out by the Foundation?

The second round of it was complex enough and interesting to me. The best students of KBTU and other universities were attended and I was one of them. I feel excited. The difficulty was that it is not easy to stand out among such experienced guys. I thought they were better than me. During the interview I was also baffled by provocative questions, like did I consider myself too young for such serious research. But I overcame it and went through the final.

3. How was the internship going?

When I arrived in the USA, Professor Tanner immediately offered me a few projects on remotely controlled robots. I chose a robot named NAO and wrote the software to easily manage it. The first 2 months I went every day to the lab and worked on this project. But when the third month of the internship I also began to study other projects related to Machine Learning, drones and watched the research laboratory.

4. What experience have you got, what the internship helped you to learn?

The internship seriously expanded my horizons. Those things that the Americans use in their research, is now available to all people in the world – all we did in the lab, has been available through the Google services. So we just have to learn to use them correctly. After internships in Kazakhstan, I began to work on projects MagicBox and SmartEcoLamp for SDU. Projects associated with the management of all devices via a mobile app and Telegram bot via the Internet or local Wi-Fi network. I see my future with IOT (Internet of Things) and ML (Machine Learning), as this technology is of the future. Just imagine that you can control by voice or buttons in the application almost everything.