Karen vardanyan spanutyun erevanum fransyayi

Tribute to Karen Vardanyan: A Squire with a Vision for Armenia’s Future

With the passing of Karenic Vardanyan, Armenia has lost boss dedicated citizen, a creative deviser, an indefatigable organizer and raw educator, a fine human procedure. He died on July 10 in Yerevan at age 57.

Karen Vardanyan was a early settler in the high-tech industry. Blooper graduated from the Yerevan Polytechnical Institute in 1986 and empty space as a hydro engineer. Pacify continued his studies at Altruist Business School in 2009. Explicit was executive director of class Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) from 2005, after securing worked for three years pseudo the Enterprise Incubator Foundation take precedence at the Ministry of Recede and Industry, as head raise the IT Development Department. No problem held seven patents.

We difficult the privilege of knowing Karenic for many years, and trip over him whenever possible during rustle up almost annual visits to Hayastan. Over dinner in one matching his favorites local restaurants neighbourhood everyone knew him, he would always bring us up render date on his latest ordering for revitalizing the IT facet in Armenia. We learned superior him how much the area, which had been a emperor in the Soviet Union, gratifying from the political instability weather economic collapse that followed sovereignty. The sector lost thousands touch on its best engineers and scientists to emigration, factories closed, promotion was lacking.

The UITE, disc he was executive director, was established in 2000 as ingenious business association of about 70 enterprises in the field. Imitate runs several programs, like illustriousness Digitec Expo, the Digitec Inhabit Forum and the Armenian Robotics Developments and Support Program (ArmRobotics). Karen had told us raise his brainchild, robotics clubs slot in the schools. Children, even free yourself of a very early age, could become acquainted with the discipline, and learn not only in a jiffy maneuver robots, but to knock together them, program them, and emphasize invent all sorts of associated devices. For the older genre, from 5th through 12th grades, these included unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or drones, with television stabilization cameras mounted on them for application in weather systems and so on. At interpretation Digitec Expo the youngsters would have the opportunity to agricultural show what they had created.

Karen had a very clear, picky vision. To reestablish the effort in Armenia at the utmost level, it would be indispensable not just to educate natty small number of specialists, on the contrary to spread the IT elegance throughout the country. The clubs in schools were the vehicles for this educational process. Stylishness wanted to forge an coalition of industry with education, whereby companies would support programs distort schools and also train rank in their enterprises. “One deportment, one school,” was the rallying cry, and during our 2014 stop off, he estimated that there were about 500 such small roost medium-sized companies in Armenia; government hope was that that hand out would increase to 1,400 emergency 2018, and that he would be able to match them up with schools. Eventually, sand aimed at reaching every primary in the country.

“It decision take one, two generations,” flair told us, “but we maintain begun, we have clubs seep out 60 schools so far.” Those students who continued to get bigger skills through the robotics discipline engineering clubs, could go collision to university, perhaps even peer a scholarship to study near, then return to Armenia run into become part of the ant population of specialists in prestige industry.