Alexey Morozov

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“People often ask me if it was hard to leave (Russia) and go to another country to get an education. I say it was, but I didn’t just throw everything away. I kept the principles of kindness, honesty, and total commitment and they have proven to have a great value everywhere.”

  • Program: 2009 Graduate Scholarship Recipient
  • Resides: Ann Arbor, MI
  • Hometown: Saint Petersburg, Russia
  • Age: 21

Biography

PROFILE: As a youngster growing up in Russia, Alexey Morozov’s mother had a “heart-to-heart” with her son that changed his life and helped mold him into who he is today, a graduate of the one of the top engineering schools in America and on his way to an advanced degree in electrical engineering. Alexey had performed only the basics on that night’s assignment and decided it wasn’t worth his time or effort to do the extra credit project his grammar school teacher offered. His mother, an engineer herself, told her son: “Alexey, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who go above and beyond minimum requirements and those who do stuff just to get it done. It is up to you to decide what kind of man you want to become.” Alexey took the advice to heart, began to do the extra-credit assignments, worked his way into a top high school and came to America to become an engineer. He succeeded in community college, enrolling at age 16, and then graduated from Michigan Tech in the spring of 2009 after having been named a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. Engineering, robotics and electricity are his fields of expertise.

 INSPIRATION: Alexey was inspired by the courage of the late Randy Pausch, a professor who publicly battled the cancer that eventually took his life. He also thinks back to his first few days in America when a professor at his community college, Jim Coughlin, realizing “I was still a bit shy,” introduced Alexey to the class and made him feel at home. “He made me realize that being different is not a weakness.”
 
ASPIRATION: He’s setting the bar high, as his mother encouraged him to do. Alexey wants to “dig deeper” into electrical engineering and robotics and eventually earn a Ph.D. He envisions his work in these areas as more than blind exploration of new technologies, and says he wants his engineering work “to be part of the larger project of making the world a better place.”
 
MAKING A DIFFERENCE: Alexey says his scholarship has allowed him the time, apart from studying, to seek out many volunteer opportunities in and around the Michigan Tech campus. He also belongs to “Tech T.E.A.”, a group that raises funds to help build schools for children in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
 
ACCOLADES: He was named a Summer Research Scholar at Michigan Tech in 2008 and was awarded an International Ambassador Scholarship by the same institution. In addition, he won the 2007 Mathematics-Sciences Department Award.
 
INTERESTING FACT: Alexey has recently taken up skiing in Michigan. On his second trip ever down the slopes he fell 47 times (he kept count). “By the end, I finally figured it out.”

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