Being self-employed in STEM

Speaker: Alexandr Honchar

Date: January 12, 2021 at 9:00 PM CET on Zoom. Click for more info.

Recording: Link

Graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) usually embark in one of these three careers in the 10 years following graduation:

• Research (university or corporate laboratories)
• Consultancy (big 4 or smaller IT companies)
• Research and development of a specific product

The self-employment career is considered something that you have to do only when you’re expert, rich and “grown up”. It is seen as a symbol of freedom, financial prosperity and high social status. More recently, several career examples have shown that it is possible to start a self-employed career without a direct employer and grow as a independent professional since the beginning.

Alexandr Honchar worked for most of his career as a self-employed professional managing an AI consulting firm. In this talk he’s going to share his experience about:

• The skills that are valued in a self-employment environment.
• What are the pitfalls hiding behind the freedom.
• How and where to get the first clients.

Alex holds a B.Sc. in applied mathematics from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and a M.Sc. in mathematics from the University of Verona. He co-founded High Performance Analytics (spin-off of the University of Verona) and worked as a freelance machine learning engineer for several years. More recently, he co-founded Neurons Lab, where he holds the position of Chief AI Officer.