Dr. Vladimir Chukharev

Dr. V.Chukharev's photo

Colloquially I'm known as Vova. Other spellings of my surname are Tchoukharev, Chuharev, and Chucharev. The different spellings with Latin characters correspond to different styles of transliterating Russian characters, used by the officials at different times. For example, 'Tchoukharev' corresponds to 'French transliteration style' used in the post office and by the Department of Visas and Permissions in the USSR. Originally, full name in Russian is Владимир Иванович Чухарев. You might need Cyrillic fonts to see it correctly.

Few years ago I got an idea how to save some energy in ventilation systems and related technologies with a very cheap subsystem. Discussing the idea with exerts in business development I learned that the idea worth implementing, that at the moment nobody in industry is ready to invest into it, and hence, that I am to prepare a working prototype of the thing myself. So, in 2017 I founded my own company named CN Vent Oy. Unfortunately, it does not bring any profit yet.

Before that, during about fourteen years I worked in the Chemistry Lab, Department of Chemistry and Bioengineering, Tampere University of Technology. This is in Tampere, Finland. Within this period I was unemployed once for half a year. Then I was again taken to the same place, with a bit higher salary and a new position title, Project Manager.

My main responsibilities were maintaining the laboratory instrumentation, helping other researchers, and doing my own research, though little time was left for the last. Officially, one of my position titles was called Associate Professor (or University Lecturer, if directly translated from Finnish 'yliopiston lehtori'), but actual time spent in teaching in classrooms was small. On the other hand, I was spending some time on developing and maintaining programs for the experimental setup control and data acquiring, for fitting the theoretical models to the experimental results, for converting the data formats and storing the information on disks or in a database. Some amount of time for the lab website updating can be included to the same part of my work, as well as computer and network administering.

Kamchatka photo

My CV does not list all places where I've been employed, only those from where I have some official papers. In addition to that, many years during studies I was building something with my friends as a small construction team, initially as a student construction team ('stroy-otryad' or 'stroyak' in Russian). Our stroyak was two times in Moscow region, near Ruza and in Lobnya. Then we've been in Kazakhstan, in sovhoz Immeni Gerzena of Kustanai region. Next year, in Zarubino close to the boarder between Russia and North Korea. Then, Rubtsovsk in Altaysky krai. Later, Aginskoe on Kamchatka peninsula, and finally, Barguzinsky national park on Baikal lake. Duration varied from two weeks last two years to more than 3 months. We always managed to earn money at least for the trip and also to gain something for our lives.

Khazakhstan-82 photo

During last years of the USSR, when almost no money were payed as salary in science, I also worked in many different places. Usually, those were temporal positions, often not full day. I've been a worker in a small publishing company, cutting paper to right size for an offset typing machine; folding big sheets into pages; binding the books with paper-back covers... Almost everything in a printing house but very printing, during nights for half a year. I worked as a computer specialist in an IT department in a relatively big mini-garage making company named Hobbit. Just to name the relatively long lasting positions.

Short-term visits abroad also helped to survive.

In year 1997 I received an invitation to Helsinki for a permanent position of a Sales Manager. Nearly same time I got ill, and then I was operated to change a heart valve to an artificial one. Fortunately, the invitation was not canceled, even though I came 4 months later than agreed. Since then, I live in Finland.

Some of my personal interests not directly related to my job are also available for your attention.