ST PETERSBURG, September 17. /ITAR-TASS/. A forum of scientists recipients of the Russian government's mega grants opens in St Petersburg on Wednesday. An appraisal of the effectiveness of the project of mega grants project and other programs aimed at developing domestic science and prospects for for such undertakings will be the main subject of discussion at the forum.
Dmitry Raichuk, Prorector of St Petersburg State Polytechnical University /Polytech/, told ITAR-TASS that scientists who come from the Soviet Union and Russia have established in Russia more than 120 research laboratories operating in the fields of most advanced areas of research over the four years of the implementation of the project. At the forum, they are to report their research results and depict an overall picture of a "science of the future".
This is precisely the title of the international science and technology conference which has become a platform for contacts for scientists who went abroad to carry on research and who now combine working abroad and in Russia, setting up laboratories on the mega grants provided.
These people from various countries are brought together by the fact that they all come from the former Soviet Union or the Russian Federation, as well as that they have made and continue to make a considerable contribution to the integration of Russian science into the world one.
Some mega grants of the Russian government have been already implemented in full while researc work is going on the basis of other ones, Raichuk pointed out. However, the forum will be also attended by scientists who have come back to Russia under other state programmes for the development of science.
Even a center of RASA /Association of Russian-Speaking Scientists/ has been set up at Polytech. The researchers work and get financing under the project "15 top 100" /a government project for supporr for 15 Russian institutions of higher learning for the purpose of their coming to rank among the world's 100 best higher learning establishments by 2020/.
These scientists have set up six laboratories at Polytech, in which work is humming to develop technologies, materials and equipment in the fields of biomedicine, biotechnologies, electronics, and structural materials.
Mega grants were instituted by a Russian government decision in 2010 and have become a realistic instrument to curb brain drain and even a way to reverse the process.