Scientist, Dancer, and Total Renaissance Woman

Technion alumna Dr. Anastasia Braginsky works full time in the high-tech industry, teaches at the University, is a professional dancer, a ballroom dance instructor, and a mother of two, and not necessarily in that order.

How does she do it all? “Proper time management, without movies, TV, and other distractions,” she said. “I love everything I do and don’t want to give any of it up, so I need to be focused and efficient on all fronts. I have no doubt it’s worth it.” Her daily schedule is divided into half-hour slots, with a task appearing in her app every 30 minutes.

Dr. Braginsky was born and raised in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. At the age of six she was exposed to ballroom dancing, “and I immediately knew this was what I wanted to do,” she shared. However, she only danced as an amateur before she emigrated to Israel and began studying at the Technion.

At age 14, she made aliyah alone through the Naale program (Youth Aliyah Before Parents). She was placed in a boarding school in Bustan HaGalil and studied at Bosmat, a high school for scientific and technological education established by the Technion in 1928. In 2000, she began her first of three degrees in the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science. She completed her Ph.D. there in 2014 and now teaches a course on operating systems.

“After I arrived at the Technion in 2000, I discovered the ballroom dancing club led by Margarita Polyakov.” The Technion club turned into the Dance Spirit Club for Ballroom Dancing and was held at various venues in Haifa. Two years ago, Braginsky teamed up with Polyakov to bring Dance Spirit back to the Technion. And last semester, ballroom dancing was held for the first time as an official course, granting participants academic credits.

“For the students, it’s a bright spot within their demanding studies — a few hours where they move and exercise their bodies like in other sports,” Braginsky said. “Ballroom dancing has many additional benefits, including improved coordination, cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, and self-confidence. Today, there are also such clubs for Parkinson’s patients, after it was proven that dancing halts motor deterioration.”

As with everything she does, Braginsky approached ballroom dancing with utmost seriousness and dedication. During her studies, she began participating in international competitions and completed a ballroom dance coaching course at the Wingate Institute. Today, she dances professional Latin ballroom with her dance partner Sergey Olovarenko.

Between finishing her bachelor’s and starting her master’s, she worked at the IBM research labs in Haifa. Like in dance, she steadily advanced in the high-tech world. Braginsky worked at Yahoo! for almost eight years and now works full time as a research supervisor at Red Hat, where she delves into all aspects of parallel and distributed computer systems.

Also during her studies, Braginsky was a teaching assistant for many years in operating systems and became a lecturer. “I continue to teach today alongside my work and dancing. I really, really love teaching, and it seems the students love learning from me.”

Along the way, Braginsky got married. Together with her husband, Alexander Pevzner, she raises two daughters: Sarah, 9 years old, and Sophia, 5 years old.