Ostap Korkuna

Ostap Korkuna (Ukrainian: Остап Коркуна; born 26 September 1987 in Lviv) is a Ukrainian American software engineer and non-profit leader. The team placed fourth overall and was awarded gold medals along with the other top four teams. As a solo competitor, he placed 13th in the 2009 Topcoder Open Algorithm Competition.

Engineering roles in the US After Korkuna's programming contest results, he was recruited to work at Facebook, and moved to California to work in engineering roles. Until 2024, he worked as a director of engineering at People.ai, a revenue intelligence software startup. Korkuna has been named as an inventor on several United States patents assigned to People.ai that describe methods for classifying electronic activities and associating them with customer records in enterprise software systems. These patents describe approaches to linking communication records—such as emails, calendar entries, or call logs—with organizational datasets used in customer-relationship and revenue-intelligence platforms.

Stanford MBA and NeoLens In Summer 2025, Korkuna completed his Master of Science in Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, enhancing his technical background with formal management education. Ostap Korkuna is the co-founder and CTO of NeoLens, a startup participating in Stanford’s Hacking for Defense program, focused on developing AI-assisted diagnostic tools for field mechanics, with early deployments supporting Ukrainian forces.

Humanitarian work and advocacy During the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, Korkuna helped organize the Ukrainian community in the San Francisco Bay area as a local branch of Euromaydan to show solidarity with Ukraine through street rallies. In 2018 Korkuna led a rally in San Francisco to support Ukrainian sailors captured by Russia in the Kerch Strait incident. Starting weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he led street rallies in San Francisco to raise awareness about the situation in Ukraine.

In Summer 2022, at a public discussion event at the Commonwealth Club of California, Korkuna outlined how Nova Ukraine helped Ukrainian refugees in Mexico and in the US with shelter, food, basic necessities, and communications, while advocating for additional aid. According to the Focus magazine, during Korkuna's leadership Nova Ukraine raised over a hundred million dollars for humanitarian aid for Ukraine and delivered significant amounts of aid since 2022.

Awards and distinctions

In 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recognized Korkuna's contributions as the co-founder and co-chair of Nova Ukraine with the Order of Merit 3rd class.