The Russian physicist Zhores I. Alferov is credited with making breakthroughs in semiconductor technology, discoveries that have been used to improve cellphones, satellite communication, and personal computers.
Today the Nobel Prize winner hopes to achieve another scientific accomplishment: rebuilding Russia’s research and technology prowess.
President Dmitri A. Medvedev recently appointed Mr. Alferov as scientific director of an ambitious project to transform farmland outside Moscow into a hub for the country’s technology businesses and academic researchers. The Russian government reportedly will provide about $200-million in start-up funds for the project.
The compound, which is to house 25,000 to 50,000 workers in the town of Skolkovo, will be closely tied to the nation’s higher-education system and existing science centers. Unofficially, perhaps as a hint of the founders’ aspirations, it’s being called Russia’s Silicon Valley.
Mr. Alferov says he will invite the country’s brightest graduate students to work alongside Russian technology companies to build “a bridge between science and business” and create scientific accomplishments that can benefit the people of Russia, where research capabilities have declined precipitously in the past 20 years.
The five-year goal is to be generating thousands of Ph.D. graduates in physics, electronics, and biotechnology.
Mr. Alferov, who has been a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois, says the Russian venture will develop foreign partnerships. Toward that end, he and Roger D. Kornberg, a professor of structural biology at Stanford School of Medicine and a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, will lead the newly formed Skolkovo Scientific and Technical Council.
The Chronicle spoke with Mr. Alferov at his office at the St. Petersburg Academic University, which he founded to improve education in physics and information technology.
Q: What is your concept for the “innovation city,” as it’s also called?
A: There has been a lot of talk in Russia about why we should call it Silicon Valley. President Medvedev and others used the term as a symbol. Skolkovo, as a scientific, academic, intellectual center will coordinate science and technology.
In Russia, one of the best examples of this approach is the Academic Town in Novosibirsk, a brilliant idea inspired by Mikhail Lavrentyev in the midst of the cold war. A vast number of talented and young academics and scientists were enticed to work in Novosibirsk in the 1950s. Professor Lavrentyev founded a good school of physics and mathematics in Novosibirsk that looks and feels like the most classic university campus. It could be compared to the best campuses in the United States.
Q: How will universities be involved in this effort?
A: Universities will be involved through their graduate-science programs. Skolkovo will provide laboratories for M.A. students from the best Russian universities, including Bauman [Moscow] State Technical University and the St. Petersburg Academic University, to pursue research for Ph.D. degrees, financed by the state.
After a few years of work in such an incubator, our students will be completely different people with unique experiences. Later they will come back to work at their universities and modernize the research in higher education. Russian universities will benefit from the huge experience these young scientists are going to bring back.
Q: How does it connect with the nation’s existing science-and-technology centers?
A: We realized that we lose our scientists already at the B.A. stage, as our biotechnology and medical students have very poor knowledge of mathematics and physics, while our math and physics students have shallow knowledge of chemistry and biology. Our job is to develop a universal program focused on broad areas of science.
Russia’s most successful scientific centers, Dubna and Zelenograd, will be participating in “Silicon Valley” by opening branches there. Our real dream is to be an example for the entire system of science and education. Whether we manage that or not, time will tell.
Q: How has the view of research change since the cold war? Did scientists feel important in the Soviet Union?
A: Absolutely. The country needed scientists very much. Unfortunately, it was mostly the military industry that requested our research. But in general, efforts to develop advanced technologies received full support from the state. At the same time, nobody understood fully the importance of fundamental research in physics. So I created an environment [at the Academic University] where students could talk to a specialist in any field and gain deep, basic knowledge, and at the same time be wonderful scientists in advanced research areas.
Our department prepared more than 200 M.A. [graduates], corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences, and a big number of Ph.D.'s. All these people now, 30 years later, make the foundation of Russian science.
Q: That took a long time. How do you think it would be possible to create a city producing advanced technologies in five years?
A: I am an optimist. That should be enough time. Russia is not the poorest country; billions of dollars are going to be invested in the project. In my opinion, Russia has no other option but to modernize. It is a question of death and life for the country. We still have a big scientific potential. And I think the United States will benefit from our project, too. For almost 20 years, American scientists have missed their competition with us. It is of U.S. interest to have a strong, peaceful, democratic, economically strong, and developed Russia as their partner and competitor.
Q: What will be the role for foreign scientists?
A: It is very important now that we form a scientific council in Skolkovo of advanced specialists, both Russian and foreign. We would like to attract the best scientists from the West. Science is international. I personally have many friends among American professors. I have visited the United States maybe 35 times. In 1970, I worked as a visiting scientist at the University of Illinois as part of a wonderful agreement the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences used to have with the U.S. National Academy [of Sciences].
Q: What are the conditions needed for the project to succeed?
A: Our project is going to succeed only in one case: If the government allows us the freedom to choose the directions for scientific research and also keeps in mind the goal of using research for commercial purposes. These two should not be too close. In the last 20 years, we fell hopelessly behind the West on our research in advanced technologies. Thank God we managed to save our Russian Academy of Sciences. Of course thousands of scientists have left the country, and a gap started to grow between different generations of scientists. But we managed to preserve the Academy of Sciences as a solid structure.
Q: You have said Russia needs a new ideology for science. What is it?
A: The new ideology will be born in the process of scientific research. The new focus should be on understanding the main problem Russian science has today—the lack of demand for scientific results to improve the Russian economy and Russian society. So first of all we should integrate our efforts; make our science international and invite foreign partners; and we should start having Russian science bring dividends to its own country.