Forbes Kazakhstan’s annual 30 Under 30 list of rising leaders features three graduates from Nazarbayev University (NU) this year.
Saddam Asmatullayev leads an engineering team at Meta, focusing on generative AI, and hosts the podcast Real Qadam. A graduate in computer science from NU, he distinguished himself in international competitions, earning three silver medals and an honorary diploma at the 2018 Al-Khorezmi International Mathematical Olympiad for university students. During his third year at NU, he co-founded Exponential, a platform designed to help Kazakh developers prepare for careers at global tech companies. The startup was acquired by DataBoom in 2023.
Assel Ibadulla works at Harvard University’s Health Systems Innovation Lab, contributing to healthcare reform research, and leads Aspire Admissions. This project supports Central-Asian students in their applications to top universities worldwide. She is the first Kazakh to win the fully funded Knight-Hennessy Scholarship at Stanford — equivalent to 350 million tenge — and one of only two international students accepted into the PhD program in health technology modeling. At NU, she founded Mind Matters, a digital tool for mental-health screening, which earned her a spot among China’s top-10 social entrepreneurs.
Gaini Kussainova, an applied scientist at Amazon, specializes in artificial intelligence and computer vision. One of her key projects — a visual recognition system for analyzing complex documents — was honored at WebDevCon. A computer science graduate from NU, she completed research internships at Tokai University (Japan), Caltech (USA), and the ADCS research center in Singapore, where she trained AI models on FPGA chips. She also took part in a summer program at Carnegie Mellon University and received a full-time offer from Amazon after graduation.
While more than 90% of NU graduates remain in Kazakhstan, contributing to national development, the global demand for NU alumni reflects the high caliber of education and research at the university. From graduate study at top-tier institutions to careers at leading international companies, our graduates continue to inspire. We are proud of their accomplishments and celebrate their well-deserved recognition.
