Hello! 👋

My name is Yaroslav Golubev, I am a research administrator and a data analyst at JetBrains Research, led by Dr. Timofey Bryksin. I also enjoy philosophy, linguistics, history, Chinese language and culture, and writing poetry. Feel free to drop me a line! ✍️

Background 🖼️

Born and raised in Saint Petersburg. ⚓

In 2018, I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Physics 👨‍🔬 from ITMO University, with a major in laser technologies, and planned to become a researcher. While there, I worked as a lab assistant, a guide in the educational museum of optics, as well as a secretary in the Foreign Students office, and participated in the THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit as a representative of Russian students. Every summer, I also worked as a camp counselor. 🏕️

In 2020, I obtained a Master’s degree with honors in Laser Technologies ⚡ from the same university, with a major in biological and medical applications. During the first year, I worked as an engineer in the lab and a scientific interviewer at the university’s news portal, and also led the School of Laser Technologies for highschoolers. While studying there, I was lucky to join JetBrains and fell in love with data science. 📊

Finally, I have an unfinished Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy 💭 from Herzen University, with a major in philosophical anthropology. In my studies, I focused on Chinese philosophy, especially Taoism, and conducted research about the concept of relativity in ancient Taoist texts. I also helped out as an assistant in research centers dedicated to Eastern culture, mysticism, and esotericism, as well as helped organize and conduct several scientific conferences. ☯️

Research 🔬

While I used to carry out research of my own, I realized that I enjoy helping other people more, and became a research administrator, with the goal of supporting other researchers, both administratively and academically. 🤝 Nowadays, I mostly assist in different stages of projects, from planning to writing. Throughout the years, this enabled me to touch on all kinds of subjects, including serverless computing, embeddings of code, Jupyter notebooks, code completion, code quality, computer science education, psychology of programming, and others. It is a great privilege to learn more about these areas from my colleagues. I also still do academic work like reviewing papers and organizing workshops, as well as occasionally giving classes. 🎓

The overarching theme of my own studies in software engineering was mining large corpora of existing source code and analyzing them to discover various patterns, as well as better understand how developers write software. While I was lucky to participate in a number of practical collaborations, my personal interest always leaned closer to the analytical and the descriptive side of things. Specific topics of my research are:

code clones, 🐑
open-source software licenses, 📝
code changes (patterns and automatic fixes), ️✨
refactorings, 🛠️
code and test smells, 👃
evolution of software ecosystems, 🌱
AI assistants. 🦾

Before my work in software engineering, I used to do research in the field of laser physics. 💥 While I did not get far, my studies related to laser-matter interaction, specifically, laser irradiation with ultra-short (femtosecond) pulses. With a major in laser technologies in biological and medical applications, my last studies were dedicated to combatting viruses, as well as creating colloidal solutions of nanoparticles with antibacterial properties. 🧫

Hobbies 🎨

My main hobby outside the realm of software engineering is writing poetry (only in Russian so far). 📜 I also love philosophy and care especially deeply about Eastern philosophy — mainly, Taoism, Buddhism, and Ājīvika, — as well as mysticism and esotericism. 🔮 Another major love of mine is the Chinese language and sharing with people how awesome it is. In addition to learning it, I love analyzing its content, popularity, history, and evolution. In general, I am interested in all major humanitarian fields, especially linguistics and history. 🏛️

Finally, while I am not an avid traveler, I did write down all the places where I have been. There aren’t too many of them, but luckily, the number can only go up! 🧳