The winners of the fifth megagrant competition have been announced
Vasily Sychev, N+1
40 Russian and foreign scientists became the winners of the fifth megagrant competition. The results of the competition on the evening of September 20, 2016 at the conference "Science of the Future" in Kazan were summed up by the assistant to the President of Russia Andrey Fursenko. According to the correspondent of N+1, who was present at the event, in total, scientists were allocated 20-30 million rubles a year for three years to create scientific laboratories. Research in the field of physics and materials technology became the most popular; in these areas, megagrants received five and four projects, respectively.
The megagrant program was established in Russia in 2010. It is calculated until 2020, and the amount of funding for the program is set at 28 billion rubles. The purpose of the program is to return leading Russian scientists who had previously left to work in foreign universities and laboratories. In addition, it is planned to attract foreign scientists to Russian universities with mega-grants. The maximum grant amount can reach 90 million rubles for three years.
According to the terms of the competition, the recipient of the megagrant must find additional funding in the amount of 25 percent of the amount of the grant received to organize the laboratory and conduct research. At the end of the three-year period, the study can be extended for another two years, having received additional funding. Since 2010, a total of five megagrant competitions have already been held. Apart from the latter, the total amount of funds allocated for grants amounted to 17.5 billion rubles. 160 laboratories were created with these funds.
According to TASS, 484 researchers submitted applications for participation in the fifth competition, 110 of which made it to the final. 40 winners were chosen by the Grant Council, which was guided by various criteria, including the citation index of scientific works of scientists — project managers. According to the director Department of Science and Technology Sergey Salikhov, "many scientists who are grant recipients who know from their own experience about all the features of the implementation of the most complex projects were involved in the expert system for evaluating applications this year." In total, the Council considered applications for research funding in 31 areas, including biology, mechanics, mechanical engineering, ecology, energy and environmental management.
In particular, the grant received a project to study new monomolecular magnets and switchable magnetic systems that can be used as reliable qubits. This project is led by Moldovan scientist Andrei Paly. In turn, the Greek researcher Elias Aifantis received funds to organize a laboratory that will develop multifunctional metal materials with extremely high defect density.
American Philip Hopke will study the empirical kinetics of generation of new phase nuclei and synthesis of materials under subcritical and near-critical conditions, and Belarusian scientist Mikhail Korzhik received funds for the development of a new generation of scintillator materials and detectors based on them, which can be used to register neutrons in a wide energy range. The full list of winners is published on the contest website.
42 scientists became recipients of mega-grants in 2015. They were also allocated annual funding in the amount of 20-30 million rubles for a period of three years.
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23.09.2016