About me

I am creative individual who loves technology and tries to get other people excited about technology. I have spent 16 years at Microsoft, being Technical Evangelist, Senior Software Engineer and then Cloud Developer Advocate. I was twice on stage with former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and have met Bill Gates.

I have learnt to program when I was 12, on paper, before getting to see any real computer. We have constructed our own computer with my father when I was 13, and I have developed my first FORTH compiler at 14.

What I currently do


Associate Professor at Moscow Aviation Institute, National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute for Physics and Technology
I teach courses in Russian and English on Artificial Intelligence, Functional and Logic Programming. I was also involved in designing AI+AR/VR Master Program at MAI.

Course Screenshot

Online Courses
I am currently developing and teaching online courses on AI and Machine Learning at Russian Institute for Transportation, Russian Technological University MIREA, at Talap IT School (Kazakhstan).
I am the main author of Microsoft AI for Beginners Curriculum (4.5K stars on GitHub), and co-author of Data Science for Beginners, ML for Beginners (43.8K stars) and PyTorch Learn the Basics, co-author of PyTorch Fundamentals and TensorFlow Fundamentals at Microsoft Learn.
I have recorded a number of video courses: Functional Programming on Intuit.ru (in Russian), Exciting F#, Exciting C#, Machine Learning for Kids, Artificial Intelligence and Art for Kids and a number of courses on AI for Business, including a course for MSU Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Large Audience

Public Speaking / Commercial Training
I am often invited to do public speaking on areas related to Artificial Intelligence, .NET, Python and Teaching Programming for Kids (see recent talks). Lately I like speaking on AI and Art.
Previously I taught AI School at Binary District, AI Business School for HSE, and others.
My Talks on YouTube
Research & Development
I am currently involved in one very interesting R&D project with HSE Design School.
I am the main developer of open-source mPyPl Library.
In terms of academic research, I have a number of joint projects with MSU Institute for Artificial Intelligence on COVID Epidemic Modeling and NLP Paper Analysis.

Picture of me with People and Robots

Digital and AI Art
As a hobby, I love doing something at the verge of AI and Art. I have pioneered cognitive portrait technique, and have been experimenting with different generative architectures, starting from GANs, VQGAN+CLIP, and lately Stable Diffusion (see blog post).
My works have been exposed in Museum of Russian Impressionism, ElectroMuseum (also here), at Moscow Maker Faire, in Moscow Aviation Institute Museum. I have done exhibits for GES-2/VAC Foundation.
Teaching and Mentoring Kids
I believe it is important to spread my knowledge and love for technologies to kids, thus I took part as instructor in JUNIO-R, Just Dilijan-IT, Computeria summer camps. Video of Kids Projects

My Work at Microsoft

I started working for Microsoft in 2006. I was a faculty advisor of FIBRA student team that took 2nd place worldwide in Imagine Cup Office Designer category in 2005, and was invited to join the company as Academic Developer Evangelist to promote development technologies in education and work on improving Imagine Cup competition and Student Partner Community.

Picture with Steve Ballmer

What was the most exciting during those times:

  • Co-organized large student events with participation of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, and was twice on stage with him
  • Met legends of functional programming world, Don Syme (video) and Simon Peyton-Jones (video)
  • Recorded popular video courses on C#, F#, AR/VR, Mobile Development that were quite popular on Microsoft Virtual Academy
  • Supervised two teams that won Imagine Cup Worldwide (2014 and 2015), and a few others who took 2nd place
  • Took part in organization of Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Russia in 2013.
  • Personally carried out more than 15 student hackathons throughout Russia in two years.
  • Grew Student Partner Community in Russia from 20 to 200 people

Later on, I because Senior Software Engineer, specializing in AI and ML. I was a part of a great team of professionals who helped big companies worldwide start their journey on using AI and Cloud technologies. We typically had 1-2 week long hacks to build proof-of-concept solutions.

Then, I became Cloud Developer Advocate, helping bridge the gap between users of our AI/ML technologies and product groups developing them. Lately, I was specifically working with educational institutions, namely: