By Vestnik Kavkaza
Russian President Vladimir Putin has reappointed Victor Sadovnichy to the position of rector of MSU. Right after his reappointment Sadovnichy announced the plans of the leading Russian university for the near future. He stated that in the last 10 years, since 2005, MSU has extended its infrastructure, built 1 million cubic meters of academic facilities. It is equal to all the facilities that have ever been built by Moscow University: “The Shuvalovsky Building was opened; the big Lomonosov building for 100 thousand seats; buildings where the Economics Department and the Department of Law are situated. We built a medical center which is a base for students of the Medical Department, reconstructed several buildings where small faculties are situated.”
Now MSU has the task of realizing scientific ideas and achievements into specific technologies and high-tech products. “Our country is falling behind in the sphere at the moment. It is easier to purchase something than to produce it ourselves,” Sadovnichy said, noting that many talented graduates from the university, especially those from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics and the Faculty of Physics, work abroad.
“We have labs, faculties, departments, scientific schools, young talented people, but they should have the opportunity and culture, so that they could realize their ideas in practice. Global experience, and we have had such experience as well, has shown that it is necessary to establish the conditions for this. Several years ago I initiated the establishment of the scientific technological valley of Moscow University,” the rector said.
Information technologies, supercomputing, the medical-biological cluster, nanotechnologies, robotic technologies, geology, geography which deals with extraction and production of natural resources. “Biologists play a big role in oil production today, even bigger than geologists,” Sadovnichy thinks.
“There are several plants which were built due to high technologies – the Medical Equipment Factory in Tula; a composite factory in Balashikha. At the moment we are building a factory in Alexino. All these ideas which enable us to build factories will develop in the valley,” the rector said.
According to him, the MSU has a great collection of pictures: “Recently, a collector gifted 300 pictures by Levitan, Shishkin, Vasnetsov, Korin, Voloshin, i.e. classical art, to the MSU. We exhibited them on the seventh floor in our museum. I invite you to view them. It is a unique collection of pictures. It is accessible. We have a collection of gems. We will build an exhibition hall so that the students can visit it, walking through alleys.”
