BEFORE THE FINALE

Interviews with the candidates within the framework of the second round of the competition will be held in the next two weeks. By November 15 presumably, the Board of Trustees of the Foundation will approve the list of five winners. They will go to the best startups of the U.S. for a six-month internship. It is expected that experts of the Foundation as well as representatives of startups in Silicon Valley will be interviewing candidates. The Foundation itself has already distributed information about applicants qualified for the second round so that startups would be able to give feedback on their interest in a particular candidate.

Ilzira Aldagarova, Program Manager of the Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation, commented on the contest:

— We have received fewer applications than last year (43 vs. 74), but the quality of applications has grown significantly and competition between the participants of the contest remained tough: 8 people applied for 1 grant. This year the challengers have provided more extensive portfolios, and their letters of recommendation look impressive too. I would like to highlight the record of accomplishments of the applicants in academic, social and volunteer activities. Some motivational essays are very inspiring even for me as I have read a huge number of such works and have no relation to the IT field. It was so exciting, that it led me to think over an attempt to express myself in this area.

The Expert Board, that will decide on the future of the program winners, is chaired by a member of the Board of Trustees at Shakhmardan Yesssenov Foundation. Eldar Akhmetgaliyev (graduate of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Caltech, a co-founder of the Mocap Analytics, working in Sportradar). In the process of the winner selection he will be joined by: Yerlan Idelbayev (a student at the University of California, Merced (PhD)) and Nurlybek Kasimov (a software engineer, graduate from the University of Colorado at Boulder (PhD)).

It should be reminded that on October 30, the Foundation announced that 18 applicants were admitted to the final stage. The same day the Foundation received request from Daniyar Kosmukhanbetov to check the status of his application. However, the Foundation’s officials have not found the application of the candidate in the inbox. Daniyar re-sent his letter with the application again, and upon receiving it, the foundation’s specialists saw that it was sent on October 22, i.e. the last day of accepting applications. Having examined carefully the request of D. Kosmukhanov, manager of the Foundation I. Aldagarova and Chairman of the Expert Board E. Akhmetgaliyev decided to admit the applicant to participate in the internship competition and found his application as adequate to be included in the final. Thus, the competition received 43 applications, and 19 of them passed through to the second round. The updated list of finalists is published on the website of the Foundation.