She’s Our Champion!

Technion graduate Dr. Anastasia Braginsky is a professional dancer, high-tech professional, mother of two, lecturer on operating systems, and ballroom dance instructor – not necessarily in that order

Dr. Anastasia Braginsky’s daily schedule is divided into half-hour slots, with a task appearing in her app every thirty minutes. Unusual but not surprising, as Dr. Braginsky is a high-tech professional, a dance instructor, a Technion lecturer, and a mother of two young children.

Dr. Braginsky was born and raised in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova. At age 14, she immigrated alone under the Naale program, or “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.

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 began studying at the Technion. “After I arrived at the Technion in 2000, I discovered the ballroom dancing club led by Margarita Polyakov.”

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

Dr. Anastasia Braginsky

Ballroom dancing began as social dancing and became institutionalized in Europe – mainly in London – at the beginning of the 19th century. Gradually, a standard was established, comprising five dance genres: slow waltz, tango, slow foxtrot, Viennese waltz, and quickstep. Influenced by Latin American dances, five more genres were added to the European standard: cha-cha, samba, rumba, pasodoble, and jive. The standardization of ballroom dancing allowed it to become a professional field with local and international competitions, and in some countries – Denmark, for example – these dances are part of the school curriculum.

The Technion club turned into the Dance Spirit Club for Ballroom Dancing and was held in various venues in Haifa. In 2022, Dr. Braginsky teamed up with Polyakov to bring Dance Spirit back to the Technion. Last semester, the club was held for the first time as an academic course, granting participants academic credit points. According to Dr. Braginsky, “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. 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.”

Dr. Braginsky completed all her academic degrees in the Taub Faculty of Computer Science: a bachelor’s degree with an average grade of 89 and a master’s degree that turned into a direct track to a Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Erez Petrank. Between finishing her bachelor’s degree 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. Dr. Braginsky worked at Yahoo! for more than seven years and now works in the research department of Red Hat, where she delves into all aspects of parallel and distributed computer systems.

Another of Dr. Braginsky’s pursuits, which began at the start of her master’s studies and continues to this day, is teaching. “Dr. Leonid Raskin, one of the veteran teaching assistants in the faculty (now the lecturer for the operating systems course), suggested I become a teaching assistant for the course. I was a head teaching assistant for many years and became a lecturer, and I continue to do so today alongside my work and dancing. I really, really love teaching, and it seems the students love learning from me.”

Alongside her many pursuits, Dr. Braginsky got married, and together with her husband Alexander Pevzner, raises two daughters: Sarah, nine years old, and Sophia, five years old. How does she combine all these things in a 24-hour day? “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.”