INT Igor Protsenko MPEG 4

I am the assistant director of the Department of International Integration

of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation.

I came to today’s meeting with Russian and American universities because

the EURECA program is very interesting to the Ministry – interesting because

in recent years the Ministry has been undertaking massive efforts

to modernize the higher education system in Russia. For example,

we’ve invested in the order of billions of dollars a year in supplemental financing

in the development of universities’ innovation infrastructures for 2010 - 2012.

This money is going toward the implementation of programs at the leading universities.

These are national universities: Moscow State University,

Saint Petersburg State University, the seven federal universities, and the 29 national

research universities. The development program for the national research universities

was awarded on a competitive basis. The competition was fierce,

and the strongest universities won. And now representatives of the national

research universities are here at today’s meeting and are participating in the EURECA program.

And quite a lot of resources are being set aside for the development

of public-private partnerships, the development of innovation infrastructure,

attracting the world’s leading scholars to Russian educational institutions.

These resources are also being divided exclusively on a competitive basis,

after long and complex competitions.

That’s exactly why this program interests us; it’s interesting to see how the participation

of American universities and the partnership between them and the Russian side

will allow Russian universities to become better, develop, put their development

programs into action and form a technological corridor, from ideas to technical manifestation.

We hope that the experience of American universities – and the American experience

in general over the past 20 years – can be applied to Russia

and allow us to follow the American path at an accelerated pace.

Is EURECA currently the only program of collaboration between Russian and American universities?

No, there are quite a few programs.

This particular program interests us because it’s oriented toward

forming the tech corridor I mentioned, from beginning to end.

Usually programs are directed at some specific elements of innovation infrastructure,

but here we see that it’s theoretically becoming possible to implement

the transitions between different elements of Russian universities,

which is pretty important for us. And no small part of it is that we are counting

on the participation of American and Russian business in this program.

That is, we hope that in the end our universities and their American colleagues will enter the business world.

And how long do you see these projects taking?

Well, the development program of the national Russian universities is planned for a ten-year period.

And we think the EURECA projects – at least from my point of view – are basically

a kind of start-up for Russian universities. The program should play by the same rules

as a regular start-up. However long the start-up survives, that’s how long

the program will survive. Maybe in two years it will end, but really, we hope that

there will be financing from other sources and the life of the project won’t end.

And how are you working with the USRF, which finances EURECA? You, as a ministry program.

Well, that… That is, USRF is a sort of partner, which from our point of view

is helping us to realize university development. We’re investing quite a lot

of resources – around a billion a year – and it’s clear that these resources need

to be managed properly. And USRF is one of the partners that presents the opportunity

to our universities to learn how to manage these resources logically and optimally,

and develop and grow.