Rustam Minnikhanov: It is important to expand a bond of science with industry and develop innovative educational environment

On 16 April, speaking at a meeting of the Council by the Rais of the republic on Education and Science, the Rais (Head) of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov said that all universities and scientific organizations of the republic have been actively participating in achieving the national goal of ensuring the technological leadership set by the Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2024.

“To implement regional initiatives, approximately 3.2 billion rubles have been allocated in areas critical to the domestic economy: means of production and automation, food security, new materials and chemistry, health protection, and a multi-satellite formation,” he said and gave examples of projects being implemented by such regional universities as the Kazan National Research University and the Kazan Aircraft University.

The Rais of the republic also mentioned the first federal center for the development of industrial robotics, which is working successfully at the University of Innopolis by the national project “Production means and Automation”.

“I expect that our universities and research institutions will continue to intensively increase their presence in all national technological leadership projects,” he said and reminded that in the whole the republic has done much work in developing strategic foundations for scientific and technological development, creating integrated system of public and scientific-technological activity and in improving regional measures to support scientists.

Having mentioned the regional long term programme of scientific and technological development supervised by Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Rustam Minnikhanov said that due to active scientific and technologic policy the number of researchers has reached a record high in recent history of the republic and the volume of domestic spending on scientific research has almost tripled in the last five years. He informed about the national competition on creating a network of modern campuses all over the country where Tatarstan is also taking an active part.

The Rais of the republic stated that there are successful examples of the scientific and technological and educational cooperation, such as scientific units, working at industrial enterprises, and advanced engineering schools.

After Rustam Minnikhanov said these examples are not enough and this cooperation must become a widespread and pervasive phenomenon, the regional Minister of Industry and Trade Oleg Korobchenko in his report gave several reasons why R&D funding remains low today, such as the long cycle time from idea to prototype, a shortage of engineering personnel, a lack of funding for R&D and a long payback period.

He said that the current level of R&D financing makes only 1 per cent of GNP in Russia compared to 3 to 5 per cent in advanced countries and reminded that Russian President Vladimir Putin has set a task of increasing this level up to 2 per cent by 2030.