Many people believe that good days bring happiness, bad days give experience, the worst teach, and the best are remembered forever. This can be said about people too. The people I will tell you about now, I hope, will be remembered by readers. These are Lenya and Olya Koppel - brother and sister.
They were born with a difference of several months in the mid-nineties in St. Petersburg, where they spent the first years of their lives. Personal development took place already in Ottawa. Their father, Alexander Evgenievich, having an excellent education, got an interesting job in Canada, and the family moved to Ottawa. Olya and Lenya were still preschoolers then.
At first, the family lived next to the science museum, regular visits to which became part of their usual daily routine. Both the children and their parents liked everything from the very moment of their arrival in the land of the maple leaf - the kindergarten with its friendly educators, the school with its benevolent teachers, neighbors from all over the world with interesting preferences, the beautiful nature, and even the unusually cold Ottawa winters. They liked it not because they had never been outside their native Penates before, and they came to Canada not from the provincial hinterland, but from one of the most beautiful cities in the world! It was as if they were wearing rose-colored glasses. In fact, people woven from the fibers of goodness, who treat everyone and everything kindly, carry goodness in themselves, and they notice goodness!
The brother and sister began to actively and joyfully attend all sorts of clubs. Olya did gymnastics, taekwondo and dancing, sang in a choir in English. Lenya went swimming, took lessons on percussion instruments. Both played European football and tennis. Later they began to study drawing together with a professional Russian-speaking artist.
In addition to fine art, Olya decided to learn to play the piano, and then the flute. Sometimes, preparing for music lessons, she played the flute upstairs, and he, at the same time, practiced the drums downstairs. In the school orchestra, his sister played the flute, and his brother played the drums.
Lenya had a habit of reading newspapers in the morning over breakfast. Olya, sitting opposite her brother, learned to read upside down.
Together with her parents, they went to the canal in the winter to skate, and did not forget about alpine skiing, so popular in Canada. In the summer, the whole family used to ride bicycles, riding up to forty kilometers at a time. At the same time, they would certainly stop to admire nature, paying attention to its beauty and diversity. In short, like many others, their life was intense and eventful. They grew up friendly, spending a lot of time doing things together. The smell of childhood is still very pleasant for both of them! Olya had humanitarian inclinations since childhood.
From the first grade, she regularly kept a diary. Her favorite lesson at school was English. She did not like chemistry, and she never took physics as a subject at school. In her teens, the girl clearly demonstrated organizational skills, which were developed during her student years, when she (already at the university) organized a flute ensemble, which eventually grew into an orchestra of 70 musicians! However, she did not enter the university in the humanities department, having decided to specialize in biology. The girl was interested in botany and zoology.
Since childhood, her curiosity and love for nature have influenced her choice of profession. Having got into the biochemical lab (Ottawa U), Olya became interested in the process, met real scientists who inspired her to do research in this field of science.
In her fourth year, she had to conduct an independent research on the topic of ‘’How do weeds affect the first spring flowers’’. In the fall, the researcher collected plant seeds with her own hands, which were sent to the refrigerator to overwinter. In the spring, they had to be planted in a specific greenhouse, under strict supervision of their growth and development.
Olya was very fascinated by this experiment, although it took a lot of time, and in addition to her studies, she worked and played in the orchestra at the same time. One day, incidentally, she and a friend won a business competition! The elder brother Lenya studied in the program for gifted children from the fifth grade until graduation. In the twelfth grade, he acted as a director in the school theater.
It was a production of "Othello", which he first directed, then filmed on video, edited and sent to a competition in Stratford, unexpectedly becoming one of its winners! He studied all his years excellently in all subjects. Unlike his sociable sister, the silent Lenya loved to shoot movies on camera more than to talk.
From the age of 11, the boy was already a programmer, he liked it since childhood and it came easy to him. As a student in high school, at the request of the school principal, he independently created the school website. He went to university in Kingston, easily entering the engineering faculty, like his dad, specializing in "Engineering Physics". Before he had time to become a student, he immediately won a competition for the best design of the university uniform. During the holidays, he worked as a programmer and refereed football competitions.
Living with friends, he often took up duty in the kitchen - friends eagerly awaited his turn to be on duty, since Lenya cooked delicious soups for everyone, having learned this from his mother as a child. (Olya learned to sew well from her mother). After receiving a bachelor's degree, Lenya spent his savings for a whole year on a trip around the world - he lived in New Zealand, Australia, and Europe.
And upon his return, he entered a master's program, but in a slightly different specialty, and not in Kingston, but in Waterloo. He studied robotics, computer and automated vision in the laboratory of autonomous vehicles. As part of his master's program, he invented a driverless car! This invention was preceded by the creation of a ‘’lunar robot’’ back in his years of study in Kingston. Despite a long absence from Ottawa, she did not lose touch with her family, and maintained close relationships with her sister and parents.
My younger sister Olya did not think about a master's degree, until she accidentally came across an interesting ad.
The girl's attention was drawn to the opportunity to study and travel at the same time. Having submitted the necessary documents and waited for consent from the master's school, Olya went to the small town of Swansea in Wales, where she received a master's degree in her specialty at a local university. During her studies in Wales, she visited Paris, Geneva, Edinburgh, Glasgow... In a word, she saw the world. Returning to Ottawa, she entered graduate school at her native university.
The topic of her current scientific work is related to DNA. Olya conducts experiments with bees and bumblebees; in Wales, the object of her similar experiments was algae. A graduate student is investigating the impact of environmental changes on bumblebees, spending a lot of time at the computer, processing the results of her experiments, generalizing them, comparing them with the results of similar experiments conducted by her colleagues.
At the same time, as an ecologist, she works for the Canadian Wild Life Foundation. Olin's wonderful brother wrote and defended his dissertation "Geometry of Manifolds for Robotics in C++", and has been living and successfully working in California for several years. He is a programmer, responsible for software for unmanned vehicles in a company engaged in automotive technology. Two parallel successful stories of young people of the old school.
Olia and Lyonya have an enviable combination of physics and lyricism at the same time. Both of them have a strong passion for science and art - the sister is still passionate about lyric music, poetry, the brother - painting, cinema. At the same time, despite their young age for scientists, they have already reached certain heights in science. However, their main achievement is the ability to see only the good in people. These two have been focused on a good attitude towards the world since early childhood, and Dasha, their charming mother, deserves a lot of credit for this. Childhood impressions are very important. That is why we need to hurry to fill the heart and mind of the child with light and goodness from the earliest age, and parents should try to spend more time with their children and do it well. Over time, what was perceived in childhood can cleanse again, save a person from the uncertainty of today. After all, in difficult times, each of us can light our own little candle in the darkness of the Universe and become a ray of light.
MARINA KOCHETOVA