Skoltech Global

🔬 Skoltech researchers uncover how nanocoatings dissipate energy at the nanoscale to prevent failure An international research team featuring Professor Alexander Korsunsky from the Skoltech Engineering Center has, for the first time, performed direct measurements of mechanical stresses at the contact between a diamond indenter and a complex nanostructured coating with a resolution of under 80 nanometers. Using synchrotron X‑ray nanodiffraction at the ESRF facility in Grenoble, the scientists showed that a multilayer coating made of ceramic ZrN with amorphous ZrCu interlayers dissipates elastic energy 30% more effectively than its monolithic counterpart, preventing crack propagation. More about the study: 🔹 in our cards; 🔹 in the detailed article on the Skoltech website; 🔹 in the publication in Communications Materials (Springer‑Nature). Skoltech is part of the VEB.RF group.

🤩 Today the world is watching a total solar eclipse — one of the rare moments when nature itself creates an almost perfect solar coronagraph. And the timing is remarkable: we are near solar maximum, when the Sun’s corona is especially complex and extends in many directions. The corona is not simply a beautiful halo around the Sun. It is the outer solar atmosphere where magnetic energy is stored and released, giving rise to some of the most powerful manifestations of solar activity: solar flares and giant magnetic clouds of plasma erupting from the Sun. These events drive space weather, affecting satellites, navigation, communications, and other technological systems in space and on Earth. We observe the corona every day with space-based coronagraphs. But a natural total eclipse gives us something extraordinary: the Moon precisely blocks the bright solar disk, revealing the corona from its innermost structures to spectacular rays stretching far into the sky. For a few minutes, we can actually see the vast atmosphere of our star with our own eyes. The image shows the corona predicted for today’s eclipse by Predictive Science — the result of sophisticated data assimilation and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modeling of the Sun’s magnetic atmosphere. It is a spectacular sight, but also a glimpse into the physics shaping our technological future. “Understanding the Sun is not only about our curiosity to explore the world around us. It is also becoming increasingly important for our technological society. The better we understand the physics of our star, the better we can predict space weather and protect the technologies on which modern life depends.” — Tatiana Podladchikova, Director of the Center for Engineering Systems and Sciences and Head of the Solar Physics and Space Weather Laboratory.

🏆 World #1 for the third consecutive year! The Russian national school team has once again secured first place in the overall standings at the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI 2026), held in Astana. The competition brought together a record-breaking 465 school students from 105 countries. All eight members of our team returned with medals: 7 golds and 1 bronze! Artem Gorokhov became the absolute champion of the Olympiad. A special source of pride for Skoltech is the contribution of Ilseyar Alimova, lead machine learning engineer at Skoltech AI Center, who helped train the team., who helped train the team. For two months, Ilseyar, alongside colleagues from Central University, the AI Alliance, and other expert organizations, guided the students through complex challenges in computer vision, large language models, robotics, and audio processing. Huge congratulations to the students and the entire coaching team on this outstanding achievement! 🚀✨

🔬 Heat treatment boosts strength & ductility in 3D-printed aluminum bronze Skoltech and State Marine Technical University researchers have found a way to optimize a copper-aluminum-iron alloy for 3D-printing heat exchangers used in electronics across aviation, rocketry, and electric vehicles. Pure copper is notoriously difficult for infrared laser 3D printing, while alloying elements can introduce microstructural inhomogeneities. The team identified the optimal postprocessing regimen: heating to 500 °C creates a stable structure with a strong balance of strength and ductility. Lower temperatures (300–400 °C) actually made the material more brittle. “3D-printed aluminum bronze offers a good combination of thermal properties and control over geometry, but suboptimal mechanical characteristics may result from the printing process. This is a concern particularly in electronics used in rockets and other vehicles subjected to shock and vibration,” explains lead author Anastasia Filippova, a PhD student in Skoltech’s Mathematics and Mechanics program. “3D-printed materials always differ in microstructure compared to those processed by other techniques. A conventional method like heat treatment will not necessarily work — it required fine-tuning of the heating parameters,” notes the principal investigator of the study, Associate Professor Stanislav Evlashin from the Center for Materials Technologies at Skoltech. 📖 Read the full study in the Journal of Alloys and Compounds. Skoltech is a VEB.RF group institution.

🔬 How to bridge the gap between quantum rigor and chemical intuition? Modern computational chemistry faces a major dilemma: while the most precise description of a material comes from the Schrödinger equation, for a system with just 10 electrons, the solution turns into an abstract mathematical object in 30-dimensional space. On the other hand, chemists prefer intuitive concepts like orbitals, ionicity, and covalency, which become hopelessly "smeared out" across the entire crystal lattice. Researchers from Skoltech, SberUniversity, the M.N. Mikheev Institute of Metal Physics of UB RAS, and Ural Federal University have published a review in Russian Chemical Reviews dedicated to a breakthrough method for interpreting chemical bonding in solids. The scientists developed a specific method for constructing Wannier functions by projecting them onto atomic orbitals. This preserves their original symmetry and allows researchers to calculate atomic charges, bond energies, and the contributions of ionic and covalent interactions based on rigorous, non-empirical calculations. “We project Wannier functions onto atomic orbitals. This approach enables us to interpret chemical bonds in terms of abstractions that make sense to a chemist — charge transfer, ionicity, covalency — while still relying on the results of rigorous, non-empirical calculations,” explains study coauthor Distinguished Professor Artem Oganov, head of Skoltech’s Materials Discovery Laboratory. The proposed method provides a clear, intuitive explanation for long-standing anomalies. Specifically, the researchers clarified the nature of the inverted charge distribution in boron phosphide crystals: contrary to classical electronegativity logic, it is actually the boron atoms that acquire a negative charge, not phosphorus. The new approach successfully reconciles quantitative analysis with conceptual models of matter.

💭 Welcome back to our psychological column BASE. Today, we're talking about the crisis of authority. The generation raised on gadgets and all-knowing AI perceives the value of knowledge differently. The formula "I know = I remember" has shifted to "I know = I can ask AI." And this is simply the reality we live and work in. At Skoltech, we don't fight this new system — we learn to use it to our advantage. There are no "teachers" in the classical sense, no vertical hierarchy, no demand to memorize for the sake of memorizing. Instead, there are mentors who help you ask the right questions, interpret answers, and apply knowledge here and now — in research, projects, and startups. Together with Irina Makarova, Director of the Psychological Counseling Center at HSE University, we've gathered key insights to help you build healthy relationships with mentors in the age of AI and accessible information — and stay motivated in a new educational environment. In the next posts, we'll continue exploring topics that matter to you. Got an idea for a new topic? Drop it in the comments 👇

🛢Numerical model helps assess recovery potential of Venezuela’s extra-heavy oil Extracting extra-heavy oil is one of the toughest challenges in the energy sector. At certain fields in Venezuela, high oil viscosity and complex formation features leave the recovery factor at a mere 4%. Traditional thermal methods are difficult to apply, and physical testing on actual core samples is heavily restricted by time, cost, and sample scarcity. Researchers from Skoltech and Khalifa University, working alongside Venezuelan industry colleagues, have developed a verified numerical model of the field. It enables fast and accurate forecasting of enhanced oil recovery strategies without relying on scarce physical rock samples, allowing energy companies to evaluate the technical feasibility and economic viability of extracting hard-to-reach reserves. 🔹 The team opted for an alkali-free approach using a combination of surfactants and polymers, avoiding the risks of equipment corrosion and scale buildup. 🔹 Numerical simulations showed that injecting surfactants and polymers simultaneously can boost the recovery factor to 12%. 🔹 The screening model can be adapted for challenging extra-heavy oil fields in Canada, China, Oman, and beyond. “It’s hard to compare these options ahead of time. The number of physical experiments you can run is limited by the availability of real rock samples from the relevant fields — such samples are very scarce — as well as by how time-consuming and expensive these tests are. So we built a numerical model, verified against experimental data from our Venezuelan colleagues, that enables further numerical experiments producing reliable forecasts without the need for new samples,” says Aysylu Askarova, senior research scientist at Skoltech Petroleum and the study’s lead author. The findings are published in the journal Fuel.

🤳🏻 Skoltech’s campus recently hosted a African bloggers and journalists organized by the African Initiative news agency. Our guests had a hands-on experience testing robots, exploring the labs, and checking out 3D printing in the FabLab. They even squeezed in a bench press session at the gym and practiced a bit of Russian! Most importantly, they connected with Skoltech students from Africa, who gave guided tours of their research labs and shared their projects firsthand.