CEO Orujyan Raising Awareness about FAST in US

Cooperation

There are some other organizations working on similar programs in Armenia. Synopsys, for example, is preparing a three-year high school online learning program on AI. Orujyan said, “We are speaking to our colleagues in Synopsys to make sure that there is not an overlap. Thus far, we understand that it is complementary. At least we are not in the same schools…We are looking to see how these two models are evolving and how we can join them.” He added, “There is much for us to learn from Synopsys, because it has been doing that in higher education for many years.”

There are also discussions with ArMat (of the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises), which may incorporate AI in its labs. Orujyan emphasized, “When we talk to our partners, we care if they are trying to transform the educational system. That is where our alignment begins.”

Global Innovation Forum Introduces Newest AI Developments

After a two-year hiatus, FAST organized its fourth Global Innovation Forum in Yerevan in October 2022 focusing on AI. The conference involved some 1,300 people from 20 countries, and nearly 70 speakers, including some well known names. Orujyan said that the idea of such conferences was to establish Armenia as a place where AI scientists and entrepreneurs go to congregate and learn, but Covid temporarily halted any progress. In 2022, Orujyan said, “We were able to awaken it and many partners from the past joined us. It gave us a boost and energy to try to bring this back again. We probably need at least one or possibly two more events for us to really build that brand in Armenia.”

There are three things Armenia may gain from such conferences, Orujyan said: networks, knowledge and money. Money at present is the least probable, but networking takes place when people from companies like Apple, Google and Huawei participate. Secondly, the speakers share cutting edge solutions on which they are working, which can help Armenians avoid duplicating existing efforts, possibly provide epiphanies concerning new approaches, and thirdly stimulates thinking about how to go beyond what is being done.

Orujyan added that in the future, in addition to the current knowledge exchange and network building, there will also be a component where investors can learn about actual products and potentially make investments in them.

Fundraising

Since the inception of FAST, the organization has been reliant on the financial resources of its founders. Orujyan pointed out that this was the understanding from the start. He said, “We make mistakes on our own dime and once we figure things out, this is where we invite the broader community to join us to executive things together.” In March 2022, the point came when FAST was ready for its first formal fundraiser, a gala in Los Angeles to support FAST’s Advance STEM Research Grant program.

It was a sold-out event with 550 people packing the room and the goal of raising funds for grants of $125,000 each for ten research teams was reached. Each research team in Armenia will be connected to an internationally renowned scientist abroad whose university will be connected to a local university in Armenia. The grants will pay for the salaries of all the scientists involved, the cost of publications, lab materials and travel.

Orujyan said that by December 2022, seven of the grant programs were already set up, and the three remaining ones will be ready shortly. In September 2022, Orujyan went to Los Angeles to report to most of the gala donors about progress.

At present, Orujyan said, active STEM researchers in Armenia number about 1,000, so through these 10 grants, approximately 50-60 people will receive FAST sponsorship. This is roughly 5 percent of all Armenian scientists, and this is just in the pilot phase of the program, he added. “We want to go to hundreds of these grants over the next four or five years. That will be a $10-12 million commitment annually which will essentially give opportunities to roughly 50 percent of all current active scientists in this space. To us, that is transformative. That changes the narrative,” Orujyan said.

Another positive development is that the Armenian government is itself offering similar funding, based on the ADVANCE model, Orujyan said, to about 18 principle scientific investigators. He said, “This is a testament to the success of the program, when the government adopts something similar to what we are doing. That is also the nature of our organization – every tool that we create at some point is going to be spun off and become an independent entity….The point of this foundation is not for us to own them but to create and mature them, and spin them off for them to work independently of the foundation.”

In other words, if the government program works well, Orujyan said that at some point FAST may exist from this to focus on something else.

Meanwhile, in 2023, FAST has four fundraisers coming up. The first one will be in Boston in March, then one in Los Angeles in April or May, and afterwards events will be organized in New York and London. Starting in 2023, the AI program alone will add at least $2 million to the FAST annual budget, so there is a lot of work to do.

Orujyan remarked: “These fundraisers are structured in such ways for the organization to become sustainable in offering continuously its product. They are not one-off types of deals.”

Institutionalization

One important goal for Orujyan to realize in 2023, he said, is to create or mature the proper institutional framework for FAST to be able to continuously function and maintain stability. He said, “We assume these things just run by themselves….Yet many entities come and go, which is normal. Organizations need to have ways to survive that are not based on individuals. There must be memory retention, so that there is not a tabula rasa every time leadership changes.”

Mechanisms must be in place to ensure proper functioning. Orujyan pointed out one such mechanism which has been successful so far: FAST has been doing independent auditing since the inception of the organization, always with one of the big fours. For the last three years, he observed, it has not received a single comment on FAST’s accounting mechanisms.