The strength of the ISET community is best demonstrated by the solid bonds that exist within the community. The number of ISET community members are returning to help the institute by passing on their skills, knowledge and experience to the next generations continues to grow.

One example is Ala Avoyan, one of the most successful graduates ISET has ever had. She finished her studies in 2012 as the valedictorian of her class, before earning a fully-funded scholarship to New York University to pursue a PhD, after which she secured a position as an associate professor at Indiana University. Ala came to Tbilisi for a short visit in 2019 to teach a two-week course in Experimental Economics. Her teaching was entirely voluntary, and a result of her desire to give something back to ISET. Ala also gave a career development talk in which she shared her experience and gave valuable insight into the opportunities and challenges graduates may expect to encounter.

Robert Tchaidze is another prominent example. As a resident faculty member, he taught at ISET in 2007-09 and has been a member of ISET’s Governing Board since 2012. In 2020, he returned to teach a course in Applied Macroeconomic Analysis. Like Ala, Robert taught his course entirely pro bono and hopes to be able to do so again in the future.

Still to come are Robizon Khubulashvili, who will teach a course entitled 'Topics in Game Theory', and Nino Abashidze, whose Environmental Economics programme is – due to its topical nature – expected to be particularly popular. Robizon is currently Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Pittsburgh, having earned his PhD from Pennsylvania State University. Nino, meanwhile, works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Health Economics and Analytics Lab in the USA at Georgia Tech; she studied for her PhD at North Carolina State University, graduating in 2019.

ISET is both extremely grateful and incredibly proud of its community: along with demonstrating what can be achieved after graduating with an ISET degree, and serving as points of inspiration to those who are currently following in their footsteps, it is the highest of compliments to both themselves and the institute that they are teaching the next generations entirely for free. We know that those students fortunate enough to learn from them are as thankful for their efforts as we are.