INT Evgeny Chuprunov YouTube sharing

Good afternoon. Could you please introduce yourself?

Of course. My name is Evgeny Chuprunov, and I am the rector of

Lobachevsky Nizhny Novgorod State University, a National Research University.

Thank you so much. Could you talk about what role you see for your university in the EURECA program?

It’s clear. In the EURECA program, it is expected that each Russian university

will cooperate with two American universities in order to accomplish a certain program together.

The program consists of creating the conditions so that the university – that is,

the Russian partner, since we are a few steps behind American universities in terms

of innovation – can develop its own intellectual property, we can implement it, etc.

That’s the obvious role.

In the course of your discussions with the other universities over the past two days

in Washington, have any joint projects emerged that you intend to work on?

Of course. We developed six modules together with two excellent and, as it seemed

to me, well-known universities. First of all, the great University of Maryland.

The university president talked to us for quite some time about how great they are,

but I already knew that, since we completed a project with them ten years ago on a different program.

The second partner, perhaps, doesn’t position itself quite so much as a great university;

but in my opinion, it is a high-quality university. This is Purdue University,

which shares some similarities with us, since we conduct research in the field of

nanotechnology, laser physics and certain areas of chemistry. It was easy for us

to understand each other, and we outlined some contacts; we’re going to work with them

on the EURECA project, six modules, and I truly hope that in any case this project will be useful to us.

You mentioned that there will be six modules – is this for the pilot stage of the project,

or will your participation be limited to that?

I don’t know. The program management will decide that.

I know that the pilot project is for two years. It’s designed that way,

so that we complete these six modules. The most important part of these modules is

training. If you like, I could say a few words about that.

Please do.

University innovation projects are designed like this: you need three things, basically.

First, you need for there to be good equipment in the universities; since in the end,

the whole program deals with work in the fields of the natural sciences, physics and

mathematics, we need to have good equipment. At Purdue University they have

this, and we also have good equipment, and as far as I have seen and know,

the University of Maryland has very good equipment. So in terms of that, everything is fine.

The second thing you need is people. Your people should, first of all,

be educated in what innovation is and how it is achieved. Here everything is ok.

We’re a little bit behind, of course, but we’re trying to teach our undergraduate and

graduate students, our professors. The important thing is more that your people

should be psychologically prepared, that they should be able to quit their current work

at the university, or somehow limit it, and begin to work on innovation projects instead.

Which innovation projects – doesn’t matter. The most important thing here is not how

that is done, but the psychological component, which consists of this: a person

must see someone else succeeding at this. And we hope that because these two

universities are successful, there are successful people there, and they can be

our example. It’s like psychological doping for our potentially successful people

to work on this project. The third thing you need for innovation projects is a legal foundation.

In general, innovation must take place in an acceptable legal environment.

We have such an environment, and it’s improving all the time, and I hope that we will

work so successfully that we can manage to keep up with the changes in this

environment – but on the other hand, not so fast or so revolutionarily that we somehow contradict the law.

We want the law to keep up with us.

Law number 217, which was passed in 2009 – has it produced any results yet?

You know, I’m about to say something that’s not entirely acceptable, but I’ll say it anyway.

That law exists largely on paper only. You know, there are patents that exist on paper,

and patents that are really relevant. The kind that exist on paper – that’s when you

get a patent and hang it on the wall, and can say to your children and grandchildren –

look, I patented this. And then there are patents that really do come into use very quickly.

So Law 217 is in some sense an on-paper law. Why? Well, yes, it allows universities

to establish small companies, but unfortunately, it puts into place a lot of

barriers that keep those companies from succeeding. In what sense? So, say we’ve

founded a company. Naturally, we must help it grow, give it operating space at a reduced

rate, etc. And unfortunately, the law completely forbids us from doing that.

So how, then, can one work? What’s the way out of this situation?

We must either put our hopes on good fortune, or use some sort of complicated

schemes that contradict the law or something. Or: if we found a small business,

then the business can only engage in the kind of activity denoted in its founding documents.

For example, we gave our intellectual property over to a given company

so that it could produce some sort of goods. This raises the question:

can the given company engage in consulting work on the same topic?

No, by law, it cannot. This is idiocy, of course. So, of course, these small

enterprises have been founded – a few in each university; we have four.

We try to help them out in various ways, but it seems to me that the law must be

developed in the direction of democratization and greater degree of freedom, so that the universities

can take care of their “children” and the enterprises themselves can somehow develop their activities.

Do you think that these improvements are attainable in the near future for Russia?

I don’t know – life will probably make them attainable in any case.

But I know that our Ministry of Education - or at least its president said

that the ministry is preparing some legislative initiatives, to effect a change in this law.

I don’t know the details, of course – I’m not in a position to know too much

about what goes on in the Ministry – but I hope that life will give them a hint.

Are you interested in longer-term collaboration with these universities after the pilot program?

Let’s say, research collaboration, since research gives results that can be patented

and licensed. Have you thought about this?

Yes, we’re interested in long-term contacts independent of the EURECA program.

This isn’t because we say that we don’t have the right equipment or people,

and everything in America is better – this is not true. The university I represent has,

in the past five years, won every possible Russian state project, and we have generally

renewed our experimental base quite strongly. But here it’s a different world, here

it’s a different approach, here there are different people and different examples.

And in any case our partnership with a different world and mentality is very useful.

That’s why I think that, if the universities we’re partnering with consider this useful

and necessary, I will do everything necessary to continue to work with them,

independent of financing, success, support and other things.

Thank you so much for your commentary. I wish you all the best.