The Inter-Conference Symposium of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE) entitled “Agricultural Transitions along the Silk Road” took place on April 4-7, 2016, in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It was organized by the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) and hosted by Kazakh National Agrarian University (KazNAU).

Held on April 8, this discussion was a part of the four-day anti-corruption program ISET organized for a large group of students and faculty from ISET’s partner university, the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen. The expert panel included Jacques Fleury, former CEO of Borjomi LLC and JSC Château Mukhrani; Mariam Dolidze, Senior Economist at World Bank Georgia; Archil Bakuradze, Chairman of Supervisory Board at JSC Crystal Georgia; Bruno Balvanera, Resident Representative of EBRD Georgia; Giorgi Oniani, Deputy Executive Director of Transparency International Georgia; and ISET President Eric Livny, who also moderated the discussion.

ISET is pleased to announce the excellent achievements of our alumni, Nino Doghonadze (class 2012) and Saba Devdariani (class 2014). Having worked the last few years as researchers at the ISET Policy Institute, Nino and Saba decided to continue their education abroad.

We are proud to announce that Aram Grigorian (ISET class 2015) was accepted with full university funding to the prestigious Economics Ph.D. program at Duke University. Aram received generous admission offers from other top schools, such as Johns Hopkins and Ohio State, which he had to decline. He also had to decline (at least for the time being) the possibility of a professional career as a rock guitarist.

We continue to track the success of our graduates and would like to congratulate Ivane Pirveli from ISET class 2011 on his latest achievement. Currently serving as Deputy Head of the Gas Department at the Georgian National Energy and Water Supply Regulatory Commission (GNERC), Ivane had been recently offered a prestigious position of a Seconded National Expert on Georgian energy law with the Austria-based Energy Community Secretariat.