The awards ceremony took place at the recently renovated Manege Exhibition Hall. Most nominations were related to the business sector: "Administrator of the Year", "Lawyer of the Year", "Developer of the Year" and such; still, some were not directly related to business. For example, Elena Kalnitskaya, head of the Peterhof National Reserve-Museum was named the best museum expert, Evgeniy Shlahto, CEO of the Almazov Federal Research Center was named the scientist of the year. ITMO’s Rector Vladimir Vasilyev was chosen as the best university head.
"A modern university is not just an establishment focused of generating and transferring knowledge; it’s a driver for the city’s development — its economics, infrastructure and culture. This is what we aim for. Inventions by ITMO’s scientists protect St Petersburg from floods, help improve the environment and fight socially significant diseases. Our students launch startups in different areas — from IT and robotics to medicine and food industry. We actively interact with St. Petersburg’s leading entrepreneurs — conduct joint research projects and educational programs. It’s really great that representatives of the business sector highly praise ITMO’s role in the city’s life and its future economics", commented the Rector.
Boris Mazo, "Top-100"'s editor notes that The Rector of the Year nomination was created as to mark out the role of education as the future of business Not all of ITMO’s graduates will become engineers — some may choose business, and become successful entrepreneurs.
"It is hard to evaluate the efficiency of non-commercial enterprises. That’s why when choosing the laureates for the nominations not related to business, we judged by qualitative criteria. We looked what the media wrote about them, what they’ve achieved in their fields. ITMO’s latest achievements are high positions in international rankings, new educational programs, its students winning international competitions in programming and robotics — all this contributed to our decision to name Vladimir Vasyliev "Rector of the Year"", shared a representative of the award’s board.
