Professor on the repatriation of Russian scientists
Many will return if they believe
A well-known scientist of Russian origin living in the UK, the founder of new scientific directions and schools in the field of physical, chemical and biological kinetics, the theory of dynamical systems and trainable neural networks, Alexander Gorban, shared with a RIA Novosti correspondent his vision of how to bring back "top" Russian scientists who have gone abroad.
Photo from the personal archive of A.Gorban
Currently, the professor is in charge of the Center for Mathematical Modeling in University of Leicester (UK) and works in According to the megagrant "Scalable networks of artificial intelligence systems for data analysis of growing dimension", he heads the laboratory of advanced methods of multidimensional data analysis of Nizhny Novgorod State University.
– Alexander Nikolaevich, the other day you took part in the plenary session "Science to return Science", which was held within the framework of the Open Innovations Forum. Do you really think that the "brain drain" can be reversed?
– You need to understand who to return and why to return. The phenomenon of scientific globalization is becoming more and more apparent in the world. No national science can compete with global science. All national sciences are smaller, even the Celestial Empire is no exception in this sense. It is strange to expect that our brilliant Russian scientists will occupy leading positions in all scientific fields.
The main task is to deploy national science in order to fully connect the country ‒ education, engineering, defense, medicine ‒ to world science. We need a "science pipeline" for the effective development of the achievements of global science. Scientists who have left can help a lot here by returning, in whole or in part, organizing international contacts or working as "scientific messengers", as one of the participants in the discussion said.
Interaction should be flexible. Suppose a young scientist received an invitation to Princeton. Let him go, but let him go so that he does not lose contact with Russia, so that he spends the 4th trimester allowed in the USA in Of Russia.
In my opinion, all these priorities are clearly articulated at the highest level. I see that the Russian government is really concerned about the development of science and contacts with our scientists who live in different countries of the world.
– Could you give the most successful example, in your opinion, of such "inclusion" in world science?
– An excellent benchmark – Stanislav Smirnov is one of the eight Russian laureates of the Field Prize, an outstanding mathematician. He worked for three years on a megagrant at St. Petersburg State University (St. Petersburg State University), where there is an excellent mathematical faculty. He created the Chebyshev Research Mathematical laboratory and began inviting scientists from France (with the support of Russian business on shares with the French).
Every year, outstanding mathematicians come to the laboratory, half of whom are our compatriots. They work for three months: they read special courses, write scientific articles, direct graduate students, hold small scientific conferences and workshops.
Recently, Smirnov was a speaker at the international organizing committee for the organization of the World Mathematical Congress (ICM) ‒ the most influential and massive congress of leading mathematicians in the world. Together with another Russian Field laureate Andrey Okunkov, who lives in America, and Arkady Dvorkovich, who headed the Organizing Committee for the preparation for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, they won the competition, and the next World Mathematical Congress will be held in our country for the first time in the history of modern Russia in St. Petersburg. At the same time, Smirnov himself remains a professor at the University of Geneva, but he is closely connected with Russian science.
– Surely there are sad examples of how the very "science pipeline" you were talking about fails?
– Very sad. Back in 1986, Viktor Okhonin, a young Krasnoyarsk scientist from the Institute of Biophysics of the SB Academy of Sciences of the USSR, invented a unique microscope with a resolution of less than a wavelength (STED microscopy is a type of fluorescence microscopy that reaches a resolution above the diffraction limit by selectively quenching fluorescence). He received an author's certificate, it was published in English. The discovery of the Soviet scientist was cited in American patents of the early 1990s.
I try to avoid detective statements, so I will say this: after 8 years, German scientist Stefan Hell "rediscovered" the STED microscope, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2014. Viktor Okhonin did not receive any awards or recognition. The scientist has left, currently lives in Canada.
I tried to draw the attention of many managers of different levels to this situation, starting from the regional level and ending with the level of middle management in the ministry. Everyone passed by: politely discussed and forgot. But it was a serious informational occasion for Russia. Do we have many Nobel laureates? Sorry ‒ not enough, and we are painfully experiencing it. Okhonin is a brilliant physicist. Why couldn't it be returned? He had to be returned with honor!
– Where could our "top" scientists return to? What scientific areas will become serious scientific "growth points" in the future?
– Firstly, IT and mathematics. Then new materials, or rather a whole chain of "new materials ‒ materials with predetermined properties ‒ smart materials that respond correctly to environmental changes." This triad will always be relevant and promising, even IT is nothing without materials.
Another direction for a scientific breakthrough in the future is biotechnology and nanomedicine, the creation of biological and active molecules with desired properties.
Another serious "growth point" in the future is additive manufacturing, digital manufacturing, 3D printing ‒ everything that allows you to create machines, parts, structures, etc. directly from the project.
In my opinion, all the returns of our scientists and contacts with them should take place within the framework of serious regional development projects of the country. If someone came to me and said: "We are making a neurocomputer factory, there will be an industry, there will be a design bureau, here is a work plan, here is a credit line, here are people… It will be a powerful core of high-tech development, for example, in Krasnoyarsk or Nizhny Novgorod. Are you ready to lead the academic part of such a project by becoming a member of a scientific conglomerate?". Of course I'm ready! But first I would have to believe it. If he believed me, I would have gone. And, believe me, many will go if they believe.
– What caused your distrust?
– I had a sad experience. Only one episode: in the 90s there was an innovative project of a Siberian neurocomputer, a complete chain, from science to pilot production. The Security Council decided to allocate $7 million for it. Not a cent has reached the project. The money disappeared. That's why I left, because I lost all faith in development. I left at the beginning of the well-fed 2000s, when I realized that my wards – students, employees – would be able to live without me.
– How many scientists do you think could come back if they believed? Statistics were presented at the forum, according to which more than 200 thousand scientists have left Russia since the beginning of perestroika. In the Global Talent Competitiveness Index of the INSEAD International Business School, Russia entered the top 10 countries in the section "Emigration of inventors". Is this close to the truth?
– Offhand, it seems to me that it is noticeably smaller, but the orders of numbers are large. The question is how to count. If we count all the people who have left with higher education, then there will be a lot of them, hundreds of thousands. If we count candidates of sciences, there will be fewer of them. Even fewer are doctors of science. If we count scientists of Russian origin living and publishing abroad, and these are scientists who have already joined Western science, then, most likely, the bill will go to a maximum of tens of thousands. The problem is not so much that they are coming from us (they are also coming from Germany), the problem is that they are not coming to us.
I know for sure that a lot of these people would like to return to Russia. Life in the West is a special life. Everyone seems to be limited by his "box". There is such a joke: we were all "robbed" there. This specific feeling inevitably arises in very well-established systems. If wings had grown here (in Russia), many would have come running. But gradually ‒ for three months, for six months... to understand, to try, to believe.
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