Thursday, January 21, 2016

The President listened to the advice of scientists large – Kommersant

On Thursday, Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Presidential Council for Science and Education. Praising the state of affairs in the Russian science, the President urged the participants to develop a new mechanism of state support of research to budget money received most worthy organization. In response, the scientists told the president that restrict financing institutions can not be, because the scientific breakthrough can happen anywhere.

In the beginning of the meeting the head of state touched upon the preparation of the strategy research -technological development. Putin recalled that the commission on the development of such a strategy given in June of last year, a document should be ready by September 2016. “The issue is of fundamental importance – warned Mr. Putin.- Our own advanced technology – is a key factor for the sovereignty and security of the state of competitiveness of domestic companies, an essential condition for economic growth and improve the quality of life of our citizens.” The President called the prepared concept of a “one of the defining documents” and compared with the strategy of national security.

After that Vladimir Putin gave an assessment of the current state of Russian science. According to him, “poses a serious foundation for the large-scale projects, strengthening infrastructure, human resources.” He stressed that research is increasingly engaged and universities – Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, federal and national research universities. Mr Putin made it clear that monitors the implementation of his decree of 2012, according to which at least five Russian universities should be in the top 100 of the world rankings in 2020. “Dozens of our high schools are included in various international rankings, just three Russian universities were in the top one hundred best in the world in the direction of” physical sciences “,” – he said. The President also spoke about the reform of Russian Academy of Sciences, reported that its result was the “unification of intellectual, human and material resources of our leading Academies».

At the same time, Mr. Putin admitted that only 10 % of state educational and scientific organizations “contribute significantly to the global and domestic science.” “Of course, the question arises: where are the others-the way things are there, how they work, – said the president and himself concluded: – Public money should be given the best research teams.” To do this, you must “for each of the priority areas’ future strategy to generate specific advice, and to have to enter not only the representatives of research organizations, and private business.

« It is necessary to look beyond the horizon one or maybe even two decades, consider what competencies will be needed in ten years or more, no need to prepare professionals today. On the basis of this analysis should be to formulate proposals for the modernization programs of all levels of education as well as training of teachers “- said the president and offered to speak on this occasion the other participants of the meeting.

Director Institute of Informatics Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences Igor Sokolov said that you can not only support leading organizations as breakthrough scientific discoveries are not only there. He pointed out that Russia has an extremely low percentage of extra-budgetary funding of science. According to him, today it is one of the major challenges for scientists. “The most important activity should become more actively involved in the interaction with the real sector of the Russian economy”, – he said.

The general director of the Russian Research Foundation Alexander Khlunov commented on the criteria for the selection of promising research projects for state support. “All the more so, once in granite fixing these names, it is difficult to refuse – suggested on.- There is very high probability of error.” According to him, it would be wrong to focus only on scientometric indicators – necessary to identify the best “at the expense of competition, competition.” The problem of the lack of extra-budgetary funding, he poetically depicted as expectation of a “first step.” “Who’s going to make a first step towards each other, either business or research institutes, – said Mr. Hlunov.- Maybe the time has come when it has to do science».

President Vladimir Fortov said that the management of the scientific sphere in the country has been” more than three dozen different organizations, “but their actions are poorly coordinated, moreover, are full of” scholastic debates and confrontation. ” In his opinion, this is one of the reasons that Russia has no time for the “explosive growth of scientific sphere”, which takes place around the world. “The growth of our publications in 15 years was only 12% compared to a tenfold growth in China and India three times – said the head RAN.- We already breathing in the back of Iran.” Academician Fortov said that “this kind of strategy” was made about two dozen, but none of them has been implemented. He proposed to prescribe in detail the mechanism for implementing the strategy and not stray too far into the future. “The strategy should be very pragmatic, with clear objectives, steps, figures and deadlines with minimum dimensionless horizons kvazifilosofskih arguments about epistemology, scientific knowledge, scholastic paradigms of thinking that we go at least into the next century – said on.- us also not to be outdone, we want results here and now. ” At the end of his speech, Mr. President Forts called to extend the moratorium on transactions with the assets of Sciences, introduced two years ago, after the reform of the Academy. “A month ago, the moratorium is over – and soon formed a crowd of hunters to other people’s property and others’ scientific results,” – complained to the academician.

«If the Academy of Science considers it necessary to extend, I renew it “- said Putin. He agreed with the speakers that state support can not be limited only to the very best academic institutions. “But what you can not do is maintain a clearly hopeless”, – he said.

According to the press secretary of the head of state, Dmitry Peskov, 22 January, the President once again meet with the head of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Fortov, to further discuss the position of the Academy of Sciences.

Alexander Chernykh


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