The Government of the Russian Federation has summarized the results of the selection among research and education centres (REC), which competed for being granted the state support. The World-class Ural Interregional Research and Education Centre for Advanced Industrial Technologies and Materials (UIREC) has been recognized among the best ones and been awarded the status of a federal centre along with additional financing for its projects. The total of 5 winners have been selected from among 20 participants by the Council for the World-class Research and Education Centres.
Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region Alexey Texler, who was personally presenting the application by the Ural REC at the contest, noted that this project had received support from the leading universities, scientific organisations, and enterprises of three regions.
“The key goal of the Ural REC is to become the leader in Russia in the field of creating advanced production technologies and materials for promising aerospace complexes, innovative transportation systems, resource-saving and zero-carbon power generation, environmentally-friendly technologies of goods manufacturing and waste disposal,” stated Alexey Texler. “At present, 58 organisations of the scientific-and-educational and production sectors are the REC participants. In total, the REC portfolio comprises 42 projects, four of which are classified as breakthrough ones. In addition, it is planned to actively implement advanced digital technologies, both while fulfilling the REC’s projects and while training personnel.”
The Rector of South Ural State University, Doctor of Sciences (Engineering), Professor Aleksandr Shestakov stressed that this is a very important victory for our university and for the whole Ural region:
“A big joint work has been done under the guidance of Ural Federal University (UrFU). The UIREC’s projects differ from those that applied for the contest because they are solving global tasks of development not only of the Ural region, but of our whole country as well. The Chelyabinsk Region presented a project of elaborating the technologies for a reusable rocket, and the Sverdlovsk Region presented a project of a high-speed (up to 400 km/h) intercity transport. The tasks of such a level are being currently set in Europe and China. The third project is the joint engineering by UrFU and the Rosatom enterprises of a reactor, which would ensure power generation with zero radioactive waste. An amazing project by the Kurgan region is devoted to prosthetic limbs. This is a unique innovation by the National Ilizarov Medical Research Centre for Traumatology and Ortopaedics.”
The SUSU Rector also highlighted that the project has a significant educational element to it.
“Here we are talking about training the supervisors and performers of big-scale innovative projects. In particular, Chelyabinsk offers a Techno MBA project, which is being fulfilled by SUSU jointly with Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology,” shared Aleksandr Shestakov.
Following the Presidential Decree, at least 15 world-class research and education centres must be created in our country in the nearest future as part of the Science National Project. These will unite the leading universities, scientific organisations, and companies of the real economy sector in order to solve big-scale scientific and engineering tasks.
The World-class Ural Interregional Research and Education Centre for Advanced Industrial Technologies and Materials was created by the joint effort of UrFU, SUSU, KGSU, other regional institutions of higher education, the Ural Division of Russian Academy of Sciences, industrial enterprises, and the governments of the Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, and Kurgan regions. Among the UIREC priorities are the research studies in the fields of power engineering, new materials, new technologies, and ecology.