The smell of sweat, chalk and ambition always reminded Zakhar Merinov of home — not the one with walls and windows, but the one built with discipline, repetition and movement.
“I guess my parents decided I needed to learn how to fight,” he said. “So they signed me up for karate when I was three.”
That early start sparked a deep love of sports. Karate led to taekwondo, then swimming and eventually Thai boxing — the kind that leaves your shins bruised but your spirit sharpened. At age ten, Zakhar walked into a gym that would shape him more than any classroom. A coach who trained Russia’s national team saw potential in him — not for medals, but for mastery. Zakhar’s dedication paid off when he earned the title of Candidate Master of Sports, a mark of distinction in Russian athletics.
But what he gained went far beyond physical strength. In that gym, he developed focus, humility and a deep readiness to face the unknown — traits that would later carry him across continents, from Moscow’s boxing rings to the sports fields of Duke Kunshan University.
Welcomed by a different kind of team
At DKU, it was soccer that welcomed Zakhar first. He joined the intramural team and quickly found himself immersed in strategy talks, long practices and competitions that stretched late into the night. But the game itself wasn’t what left the biggest mark — it was the people.
It was the water breaks. The quiet encouragement. The missed shots followed by laughter. Zakhar felt embraced by a community that looked nothing like the one he left behind. Chinese teammates welcomed him without hesitation, explained unfamiliar rules with patience and made sure he never felt like an outsider.
“Their openness surprised me,” he said. “We even traveled to Beijing together afterward.”
The checkbox that changed everything
While Zakhar adapted quickly, the road to China was full of twists. When applying to Duke, he noticed a small checkbox — an option to study at Duke Kunshan, a place that, at the time, didn’t even show up on Google Maps.
“My intuition told me,” he said, “that the future — technologies and opportunities — was shifting east.”
What he didn’t see coming was a sudden COVID outbreak that shut the world down. Borders were closing fast, and like many international students, Zakhar’s journey to China was abruptly paused.
Instead of heading east, he was rerouted west to Duke University in North Carolina. It felt surreal: a vibrant campus, inspiring professors, and his first taste of American college life.
“I met African American friends who supported me a lot,” Zakhar said.
But there was another side to the dream. He had left home for the first time, and homesickness hit hard.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed home,” he said. “I even decided to take a semester off.”
Quarantine, cards and quiet victories
Just when he was questioning everything, DKU stepped in. Determined not to leave students stranded, the university coordinated with embassies and organized special charter flights, covering the costs for students like Zakhar to finally reach China.
The journey, though, wasn’t over. Before setting foot on campus, Zakhar endured weeks of quarantine in Wuhan, where temperatures soared past 40 degrees Celsius. The days blurred together.
And yet, loneliness didn’t hit quite the same. Even through locked doors and spotty Wi-Fi, connection found a way in.
“We played cards online with people we met on the plane,” he said, smiling. “We bonded over WeChat calls through locked doors.”
Finally arriving on campus felt like a quiet, hard-earned victory. And it opened a new chapter — not just in his education, but in his sense of purpose.
Finding purpose through machine learning
Zakhar had always enjoyed math but never quite knew how to apply it — until he took a machine learning course with Professor Matthias Schroter.
“He didn’t just teach theory,” Zakhar said. “He made us understand it. Use it. It changed my whole perspective.”
Inspired, Zakhar dove into hackathons and startup projects. One of the most memorable involved building a synthetic patient platform powered by the open-source Llama model, using AI to simulate mental health scenarios and help future psychologists practice diagnostic reasoning.
The work demanded long hours, constant learning and a belief that effort would eventually pay off. And it did. At the end of his junior year, after solving hundreds of LeetCode problems and surviving rounds of interviews, Zakhar landed a full-time role as a machine learning engineer at an insurance company — optimizing systems that shape real-world decisions.
“If you’re enthusiastic and not too shy to ask questions, meet people, or take challenges,” he said, “you can definitely get a job after studying at DKU.”
Crashing a project to build something better
His journey wasn’t without setbacks. Two weeks before his Signature Work deadline, Zakhar made a brutal decision: delete the entire project he’d spent a year building.
Originally, he had focused on predicting cryptocurrency prices using current data — but he realized markets don’t move in straight lines, and models don’t always hold up.
“I could’ve submitted the draft and passed,” he said. “But I wouldn’t have been proud.”
So he started from scratch, rewriting the code and paper in just two weeks — this time exploring how market trends respond to online chatter. The result was a novel take on cryptocurrency forecasting, powered by ChatGPT-4. Zakhar trained multiple models, compared their accuracy and came to a surprising conclusion: AI often outperforms human intuition.
“We’re all cooked,” he joked.
Creating community far from home
Behind the laugh is a deeper truth: college isn’t just about building machines. It’s about building community. Just as Chinese students welcomed him, Zakhar — now vice president of DKU’s Russian Speaking Club — created a space for others to feel at home.
“In a place far from home, we celebrate what connects us,” he said. “People from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and beyond — we share a history.”
From cultural fairs and home-cooked dishes to heartfelt conversations about identity, the club became more than a group — it became a sanctuary.
“Whatever happens in politics,” Zakhar said, “we stay humans.”
What the future holds
Now, with graduation on the horizon and a master’s degree in Germany ahead, Zakhar plans to spend a quiet month in the mountains to reset — to reflect.
“It’s been an enjoyable challenge,” he said. “Every experience shaped who I am today.”
And while Zakhar may use algorithms to forecast trends, one thing is clear: He’s not just predicting the future.
He’s creating it.
By Anastasia Titarova, Class of 2027
