Looking Back on My Year
My 46th year on planet Earth was packed with experiences. One unusual feature of the past year was sobriety: I stopped drinking alcohol. For the first time in many, many years, I spent nearly the entire year sober.
Among the achievements and important events of the year, I'd single out June—the first month I'd ever spent with my entire family together. All three of my kids were with me, and we had a wonderful time for a whole month. We went on an awesome stand-up paddleboarding camping trip on the Nerka River, headed to Nikola-Lenivets for Kids' Archstoyanie, where we tried out our new tent, took boat rides, went on long walks, visited friends and family, and generally had a fantastic time together.
During my 46th year, I visited several new cities and countries, met lots of new people, reconnected with people I hadn't seen in ages, toured poultry and livestock operations, and kept challenging my fear of public speaking by giving presentations at several exhibitions and summits. Highlights included my unexpected talk at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum; a presentation about my index at the Meat & Poultry 2026 summit; taking part in the Russian Ministry of Agriculture's Big Livestock Farming hackathon, where our team won and I presented the results of our two days of work; making it to the semifinals of the Leaders of Russia team competition, where our dream team fell just 5 points short out of 310 of reaching the final; chairing a State Examination Board at Timiryazev Academy for the first time, overseeing state exams and thesis defenses; and receiving my first invention patent.
There was progress in my research, too. I helped produce two more publications for Russia's Ministry of Agriculture, one on digital platforms in agriculture and another on the development of the data economy in agriculture. I completed my graduate studies at Timiryazev Academy and am finishing my dissertation, which I presented at a preliminary defense a week ago. One especially important result was that I managed to put my method into practice experimentally in a real project—an important milestone for the dissertation.
On the personal side, I would single out something that happened last November, which I don't want to discuss—some happiness is best kept private. My art collection also grew: for New Year's, my wife gave me the best gift in the world, an original production cel from Season 2 of The Simpsons, something I'd dreamed of owning for years. Among my personal projects, I'd highlight the Stukalin family tree, which I built as an interactive web app; Streaklane; a digitized taxonomy of the Russian IT market; and a fuzzy-logic-based risk forecasting system.
In short, it was a good, eventful year. May the next one be even better.