INT Vladimir Vasiliev YouTube sharing

Could you please talk about the role you see your university playing in the EURECA program?

Our university’s role is synchronized with the development program of

a national research university through year 2018, and one of the directions of this

program is actually technology transfer and the commercialization of university

scientific research and its results into a real sector of the economy.

In both the university development program and the EURECA program,

we’re focusing on how our university will serve as a hub for, at minimum,

the European part of the Russian Federation. And if such an ambitious goal

is set, emphasizing not only the development of the university, but also the hub

– which should be able to distribute the competencies it acquires as a result of

the EURECA program to other universities, to small and medium technology enterprises,

to financial institutions and governing organizations – then of course, yes,

this task is very complex and large-scale. So, that’s the main thing.

Again, “innovation hub” – this is probably the key word in the implementation

of the EURECA program.

Thank you. And how do you see the work of Russian universities with

their American partners develop within the framework of EURECA?

Well, in reality it’s rather well-known that the United States is where

the cycle is most developed, which first of all quickly shortens the implementation cycle,

that is when the technological path of transitioning from an idea to the end product

– and an end product which is already put on the market, and is in demand on

the market – there is definitely something to be learnt from the American education system.

We realize that we are working in a different legal environment, that is,

the legal system of the U.S. and Russia differ, including in the area of intellectual

intellectual property rights. Nonetheless, the basic technological invariants,

in our opinion, exist, and we would like to do more than just borrow

American experience and distribute it in Russia – we’d like to also have some

concrete mutual projects that teams based on the partnerships would work on.

That is, students, graduate students, teachers, and people from the American universities.

In this way, we would receive new competencies as a result of our collaboration.

I think that some of our developments could also help – or at least hint, in any case,

about the direction of development in American universities.

In order to not be unsubstantiated: for example, our university has a system

for searching, gathering and preparing gifted youth in the area of informatics,

the development of programmatic support. Maybe some elements of this system

would be interesting to our American partners. There are also some other

developments, but I see the joint work in those invariable parts that would be mutually interested.

Law 217-F3, which was passed in 2009, we know, is compared with the American

Bayh-Dole law of 1980. In your understanding, what is the role for this law

in the field of tech transfer at present?

Well, in reality Law 217 is stricter than Bayh-Dole, but it was passed nonetheless.

We were waiting for this law, or at least a pared-down variation of it, but this law

creates, for the first time, the possibility for direct university participation in the founding

of small companies, in the actualization of the intellectual property universities possess.

Of course Law 217 needs certain revisions and changes.

I hope, and I’m even sure, that such changes will – literally in the very nearest future,

in the next six months or the next year for sure – will be put into place,

these changes that allow our universities to increase their abilities and possibilities even more.

That’s why, I emphasize, this law is necessary, we were waiting for it

– even though it is, in the end, more limiting than the Bayh-Dole law.

Furthermore that law is 30 years old, and ours is less than one year old.

Nonetheless this year we’ve already managed to found

– have founded new start-ups on a monthly basis.

A monthly basis?

That is, as of today, as of September, we have founded 14 small companies, firms.

So even if in this limited way, there is a real attempt to get into the market

and commercialize the things we’ve developed. So that’s why I think everything is fine.

Thank you so much for your commentary.