ARKHANGELSK, October 17. /TASS/. The Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NAFU, Arkhangelsk) and the Belarusian State Technological University (BSTU) will cooperate in exploration, production, refining of oil and gas, forestry, biotechnology, information technology, materials, artificial intelligence, as well as in small nuclear energy development, the Belarusian university's Chancellor Igor Voitov said at the Russian-Belarusian conference on engineering teaching.
"During the Engineers of the Future forum, we have decided on new areas to develop: from materials to biotechnologies," he said at the conference in Arkhangelsk. "An interesting direction is small mobile nuclear systems. The Russian Federation has been actively developing this direction. We could establish cooperation between Belarusian scientists and scientists in Severodvinsk. I will discuss this with our professors. They have raised this issue, we have been developing this topic, though so far - regarding big nuclear power plants. The demand is for small power plants, so it is very important."
The universities have similar divisions, which is important for cooperation. The basic sphere is everything related to the timber industry. "The Belarusians have extensive experience in using forest chemistry products, by-products of pulp and paper production to produce chemicals, which are used further on to improve the paper quality. To regulate its absorbency, to increase the strength. That is, when right at a pulp and paper enterprise they make of waste the product that improves the final product's properties. This is very important," NAFU's Professor at the Pulp and Paper and Forestry Department Yakov Kazakov told TASS. "Those are also solutions to replace earlier imported products. The Belarusians have quite a lot of experience in this."
The universities will work on unmanned technologies in the forest industry. "We have agreed to do joint research and production to use unmanned vehicles in northern regions, like we have done in Belarus," Voitov explained. Another direction is to use modern logging technologies. Belarus has advanced mechanical engineering, and this area would be developed for the forestry industry, including with artificial intelligence elements.
In the future, the universities will work on space projects, in particular, on microsatellites.
Cooperation in the Arctic
Other directions for cooperation include psychology and human work in the Arctic, the chancellor continued. BSTU trains specialists in drug production, and NAFU has modern laboratories to work with drugs for a healthy lifestyle. "We may extract various plants that grow both in Belarus and in Russia, and produce biologically active substances to have a new product on the market, and it would be of demand," he added.
BSTU is developing information technologies in water management. The conference participants suggested creating a digital twin of the Northern Sea Route.
More than 100 students, postgraduates, teachers, scientists, and businesses' representatives of Russia and Belarus took part in NAFU's first Russian-Belarusian conference on engineering teaching.