VISITING SHENZHEN AND HARBIN

The last stage of preparation of the three winners of the “Internships in innovative enterprises of China” program to go to China is already in progress. About a month ago we announced the names of the winners, Dinsultan Absattar (Kyzylorda, SDU student), Olzhas Adiyatov (Kostanay, Nazarbayev University graduate) and Azamat Tikenov (Kaskelen, SDU lecturer) who will be travelling to China soon. Arman Zharmagambetov, who was in the initial list of the winners, opt out of the internship due to personal reasons and Azamat, who was in the reserve list, replaced him. While the Chinese Embassy in Kazakhstan is processing the documents to issue visas, the Foundation’s staff visited the cities of Harbin and Shenzhen.

Headquarter of Makeblock, a start-up where our winners will spend six weeks on their internship, is in Shenzhen. Irina and Maksat met with the founder of the company and CEO Jasen Wang. The latter confirmed the company’s commitment to receive Kazakhstan interns in the field of IT and made several proposals for future cooperation with the Foundation. Mr. Wang and Makeblock are interested in entering the Kazakh market and are considering the possibility of establishing a children’s educational center for robotics in our country. During the visit, the Chinese startup showed to its guests their 3D printer, laser engraver and other sites developed using company equipment.

Makeblock has identified the employee who will supervise the students from Kazakhstan and assist them with accommodation, city orientation and other everyday life errands. The interns will receive introductory trainings on a par with the Makeblock new staff.After determining the level of knowledge and competence for the Kazakh students each of them will be assigned with personal task for the duration of the internship, which can last up to six months. At the end of the internship, the Foundation’s specialists will analyze the results and decide on further developments to the program.

I. Grishchenko and M. Kurmanbayev also visited the Harbin Polytechnical University and the HRG (Hit Robot Group) company. Harbin University works closely not only with leading Kazakh and Russian universities, but also with Stanford University. Chinese experts, employees of the University are involved in the implementation of the space program of their home country. “Our goal was to ensure that Kazakhstan students — the winners of our competitions — in the future could learn the theoretical part in their fields at the Harbin Polytechnic University, while honing practical skills in HRG”, — Irina Grishchenko shared with us. Such an agreement was reached at a meeting with Liu Wei, Deputy Head of the Centre for International University Students. During the meeting the latter noted: “We are ready to develop a six-week program to receive students that accommodate the students with both studying with our professors and undertaking an internship with HRG. Launching such a program next year seems quite feasible”.

HRG is a robotic company. In addition to the production of robots, it is engaged in innovative robotic solutions in the field of medicine. HRG also has a small café chain, where the service of the customers is carried out entirely by robots. The representatives of the Kazakhstan foundation met with the Vice-presidents of the HRG Li Zengqiang and Bai Xianglin. As an outcome of the meeting the decision on the implementation of joint educational projects between The Shakhmardan Yessenov Foundation and HRG was reached.