Dr. Alexei Semenov

Professor Alexei l. Semenov was born in 1950, Moscow and received his M.S. (1972) and Ph.D. (1975) from Moscow State University. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Russian Academy of Education.

Professor Semenov is a prominent mathematician in mathematical logic, complexity theory and computer science. In 2006 he received the Kolmogorov Award (RAS) for “outstanding results in the field of mathematics”. For the last 18 years he has led the Moscow Institute of Open Education which is responsible for the professional development, in-service training, guidance and consulting of all 100,000 Moscow teachers.

Since the mid-1980s, he has been leading the transformation of general (primary and secondary) Russian education based on digital technologies. He developed a conceptual framework and practical implementation (including textbooks, software, standards, and organizational documents) for learning, teaching, and management processes using ICT and in line with the educational priorities for meeting the needs and aims of a knowledge society. He founded the Institute of New Technologies, implementing the constructionist approach to early child development, and leads an R&D group in charge of curriculum, learning materials and software for the development of child reasoning and communicating skills in visual and palpable environments. 

Professor Semenov was a plenary speaker at Second World Congress on Informatics and Education (Moscow, 1996), a key speaker at Workshop “Narrowing the gap between the information rich and the information poor: new technologies and the future of education” at the 46th International Conference on Education (Geneva, 2001), the major author of UNESCO books: Recommendations on ICT in Primary Education, 2000, ICT in Schools. A Handbook for Teachers or How ICT Can Create New, Open Learning Environments, 2005.

Professor Semenov is the first winner of the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICTs in Education of 2009. He has 9 children and 6 grandchildren.