Chubais and Matvienko signed a cooperation agreement

RUSNANO CEO Anatoly Chubais and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko signed a cooperation agreement

The main objectives of cooperation between the Corporation and the administration of St. Petersburg in the next few years will be:

• implementation of the state policy in the field of nanotechnology;
• creating conditions for the commercial use of the results of scientific and technical activities in the field of nanotechnology and nanoindustry;
• implementation of investment and infrastructure projects in the field of nanotechnology;
• implementation of educational programs in the field of training and retraining of personnel in the field of nanoindustry.

St. Petersburg has become the sixth Russian region with which RUSNANO signs a cooperation agreement: similar agreements have already been signed with the Tomsk and Sverdlovsk regions, the Republic of Tatarstan, Moscow and the Moscow Region.

One of the first practical examples of the implementation of the Agreement will be RUSNANO's participation in the work of the information and consulting center for innovative companies, which opens on December 25 in St. Petersburg.

Currently, the Corporation from St. Petersburg has received about 70 applications for financing projects in the field of energy, mechanical engineering, medicine, electronics.

One of the projects initiated by scientists from St. Petersburg has already been approved for funding. We are talking about a project to create a production of lighting equipment of a new generation.

- The agreement will become another strategic document for St. Petersburg in the development of the regional innovation system, - stressed Valentina Matvienko. – It will make it possible to prepare urban projects in the field of nanotechnology more efficiently for them to receive funding from RUSNANO, and will provide information interaction between investors and innovators. For its part, St. Petersburg will pay special attention to supporting enterprises working in the field of nanotechnology. Cooperation between the city and the corporation will continue within the framework of the St. Petersburg International Innovation Forum and the International Forum on Nanotechnology. These and many other areas of joint activity, enshrined in the Agreement, will allow the development of its traditional and emerging clusters in the city, which will be able to receive an additional boost of nano-projects and technologies.

- There is no nanotechnology sector in Russia today, we are creating it from scratch, - Anatoly Chubais said. - This task can be solved only if the full potential existing in the Russian regions is mobilized. In this regard, St. Petersburg is completely unique: both from the point of view of scientific and technological groundwork, and from the point of view of university potential, and from the point of view of the demand for innovations by the industry of the region. And in this sense, St. Petersburg is for us one of the key regional priorities, supports for building a system for the development of the Russian nanoindustry, which will become a new real sector of the economy in the 21st century.

RUSNANO Press Service

Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru23.12.2008