Personal Interests

Future City Competition

For the last three years I have been a Special Award Judge, from IEEE Chicago, to Future City Competition. Future City is a competition for 6th, 7th, and 8th graders where students design their vision of a future city with simulation software, build scale models, write essays, and give oral presentations.

• Future City 2016 Competition pictures are available at Flickr.

• Future City 2015 Competition IEEE Report is available at IEEE.

• Future City 2015 Competition pictures are available at Flickr.

• Future City 2014 Competition pictures are available at Flickr.

Books

Reading Books is one of my passions. Here is a short list of my favorite modern fiction and non-fiction writers:

1. English Language:

   1. Malcolm Gladwell. I recommend all of his books. My personal favorite is “Outliers.” He also has a number of very interesting TED talks.

   2. Jared Diamond. “Guns, Germs and Steel” has been one my favorite books since high school.

   3. Simon Singh. I would like to thank Dr. Goncharoff for gifting to me a copy of Fermat's Last Theorem.

2. Ukrainian Language:

   1. Semen Skliarenko (Ukrainian: Скляренко Семен Дмитрович). My favorite is a historic novel Volodymyr (Ukranian: Володимир) about prince of Kievan Rus.’ Unfortunately, the novel has not been translated yet.

3. Russian Language:

   1. Boris Akunin (Russian: Борис Акунин). One of my favorite modern Russian writers. His series on 19th century detective Erast Fandorin (Russian: Эраст Петрович Фандорин) is one my favorite. For those interested, many of his books are available in translation.

Currently Reading: Bosch and Schelm (Russian: Бох и Шельма) by Boris Akunin. Unfortunately, I do not think the book has been translated to English yet.