Moscow, June 21, 2007

Dear Chairman! Dear colleagues!

Briefly speaking, nanotechnologies bring a revolution of thought and perception, of understanding research and production and standards of creating material resources vital for modern people. The majority of developed countries realized that nano development promises noticeable benefits of material and social kind apart from technological advantages. The specialists affirm that the completion of forming the market of nanotechnological products and services, which may take place in 2015, will provide its capacity up to 1.5 trillion dollars. The number of new workplaces will increase up to millions.

Russia must not stand aside of these processes. On the contrary we think that our country has all reasons both to participate in them and to form and manage these processes.

In particular, the Russian Federation and the leading countries stand on similar positions concerning scientific and technical level of development. We have advanced and often unique plants of research infrastructure, e.g. synchrotron centers, neutron reactors, centers of electron beam technologies.

Russian experts have elaborated a modern and highly effective nano-instruments including atomic force microscopes, "clean rooms", molecular-beam epitaxy and nano-fub.

The works of Russian scientists are acknowledged all over the world. They describe the use of synchrotron radiation including the research of nanomaterials and nanostructures, the semiconductor optoelectronics' development on heterostructural basis, the research of new materials, especially on the basis of carbonic structures, metals with higher exploitation qualities and biochips.

Today researches and developments in the nanotechnological field of different levels are carried out by 49 of 349 institutions of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 30 (including two federal) of 58 universities - winners of the contest among innovative universities - 8 of 52 state research centers.

The expenses for NIOKR in the frame of FTP "Research and development in priority fields?" / "The industry of nanosystems and materials" are planned in 2007 in the volume of 4.2 billions

At the same time we have to state the presence of a significant gap among the high quality of conducted researches and produced scientific-technological margins and the crucially low level of national nanoindustry infrastructure and poor coordination of works maintained on a state scale. Our today's task is to find optimal, fast and correct ways of solving these issues.

The most important step in this direction has been already done. This April the Russian President confirmed the initiative "Strategy of nanoindustry development". This strategy provides creating the infrastructure of the National nanotechnological network (NNN) which will concentrate the resources on priority research and development fields, increase the works' efficiency and the level of their coordination and create the enabling environment for fast implementing of new and competitive nanotechnological products in the national economics.

At the same time the President of Russia made a decision to establish the "Russian corporation of nanotechnology" to elaborate and develop the state policy in the field of nanotechnologies, of providing organizational and financial support of innovative nanotechnological activity, of selection, coordination and financing the prospective projects. On June, 9 the corresponding draft was approved in the first reading by the State Duma.

The corporation should become one of the key issues of the National nanotechnological network. The matter of principle is public and open character of the Corporation's activity, its financial and administrative-legal stability, strict state and social control of its work.

No less than 130 billion rubles will be passed under the control of the corporation. The draft provides that the money will be distributed according to the regulation approved by the Government of Russia. We conceive that first of all these funds should be aimed at settling the following issues:

1. The projects based on state-private partnership. The support at early, i.e. high-risk, technological stages of important innovative nanotechnological projects. The decision to grant such a support must be made with considering both the scientific meaning and commercial prospective of a nano-project realization.

2. Target support of the best development programs created by the leading scientific and technological institutions (the corresponding decision was made by the President). The pilot project on a competitive basis in the volume of 30 billion rubles could be given to the institutions implementing the innovative problems in the nanotechnological field.

3. The development of nanoindustry infrastructure which is outdated and ineffective in many cases. At the same time the main target should be providing the national scientific, scientific-technical and scientific educational organizations with progressive research equipment (today the coordinating of the special FTP "The development of nanoindustry infrastructure" in 2008-2010 is finishing, the volume of financing is approximately 25 billion rubles. The program can be integrated into the Corporation's activity).

Another most important element of NNN is a leading scientific network organization responsible for coordinating the scientific activity of the President's initiative "Strategy of nanoindustry development". Such an organization was chosen on a competitive basis. This is the Russian Center of Science "Kurchatov Institute". The leading branch organizations will be also a part of NNN supporting the nanotechnology development projects on priority directions, the scientific and educational centers (SEC) established at the leading universities and venture and investment funds as instruments of projects financing on the stage of commercializing the production technology.

Our Council is to fulfill the coordination of the National nanotechnological network's activity.

What should we concentrate our energies first and foremost on? In my point of view the key issues are:

I. Reliability, competitiveness and safety of nano-production. The achievement of the necessary qualities demands standardization and certification of nano-products and processes. The certain system of control and quality provision at all production stages, including market, should be established in the frame of existing international standards. In this case the important result for us is a strict accordance of nano-production with is functional purpose and a removal of technical barriers in the international barter, i.e. the outlet to the international market. That will also give us effective tools of protecting our own nano-production market.

At the same time the nano-production certification should include the broadening of the existing testing base and creating new tools of nano-measurements, standards and testing laboratories, i.e. the development of nano-metrology, which demands fundamental researches in this field. In other words we shall create a normative basis for dynamic development of nano-production market.

This problem is challenging in many countries, there are active measures in this direction. We should provide overall financing of these directions - the one who possesses the standards to a great extent will control the world market. I suggest establishing a separate working group for this direction within the Council.

II. Complexity of nanotechnological problems determines an exceptional importance of training modern top-level personnel. This demands the elaboration of new state educational standards of the third generation, covering key directions of nanotechnologies.

Inter-industrial or rather super-industrial character of nanotechnologies makes us search completely new approaches to training personnel. In particular, in the frame of multi-level educational system the issue of baccalaureate training on general fundamental directions in the leading universities of Russia could be considered. Then, on the level of magistracy the graduates would go through the special co-education on nanotechnologies.

The indispensable condition of a top-level training is the strict unity of educational, scientific and innovative activities. Such unity will be achieved by establishing scientific and educational centers of nanotechnologies equipped by the modern tools at the leading universities of Russia.

It is natural that personnel training is connected to providing new workplaces and therefore is of significant social importance. I suggest that the matters of coordinating scientific researches and personnel training would become a topic of another workgroup which should be established at our Council.

III. While discussing the directions listed above, i.e. questions of infrastructure and metrology development and of personnel training we should bear in mind that apart from scientific and technological components our nano-projects must be of a sharply defined market character. They should provide the advancement of Russian technologies, products and services to the national and world high-tech markets.

It is vital for us to have an impartial expertise of all the steps launched by us from the position of their economical effectiveness. Of course, that must not minimize the importance of fundamental science, which is essentially present in almost all nanotechnological projects.

In our opinion, this expertise can be provided by a special workgroup which would include both the representatives of scientific and state bodies and the Council members from Russian private business. I advise to establish such workgroup within the Council.

As any scientific-technical revolution a wide use of nanotechnologies creates a new field of opportunities significant on a national scale. In this case these opportunities vary from public health (including new medicine with target delivery, biosensors for on-line diagnostics, new medical equipment, etc) and ecology to security and war against terrorism (including control and protection of the documents, systems of access and detection of dangerous substances, etc).

Considering the importance and apprehensibility of such issues, which clearly determine our national safety, we must constantly keep them in sight, to evaluate their state in the country and to take appropriate measures. I think it advisable for the Council members, who have direct ties with the listed matters in their capacity, especially with the war against terrorism, to prepare their concrete suggestions to the next meeting.

Thus, the first problem we meet today is providing an impartial expertise and unprejudiced evaluation of suggestions concerning the national nanoindustry development. The Council members can guarantee the realization of this top-level expertise and the elaboration of efficient measures which will improve the quality, the demand and the international authority of our scientific achievements, will provide their effective commercialization and the advance of Russian nanotechnological production to the world-wide level.

Thereby terms and conditions for solving the key task will be created. The task which the national nanoindustry faces is to contribute to forming an innovative economics in Russia, to improve the quality of social life and to guarantee the security of our country.