Translated material
Director of High Technologies
Leonid Melamed headed the Nanotech state corporation
Russian businessman Leonid Melamed, known for his liberal economic views, who worked for several years at RAO UES of Russia together with Anatoly Chubais, was appointed general director of the newly created state Russian Nanotechnology Corporation (Nanotech) by decree of the country's president last Friday. Mr. Chubais himself became a member of the corporation's supervisory board. And by decision of the government, Minister of Education and Science Andrei Fursenko was appointed chairman of the board of the new state corporation.Mr. Melamed was born in 1961, a radio engineer by training, and a candidate of economic sciences. From 1998 to 2000 he was the general director of the Rosenergoatom concern, from 2001 to 2004 he was the first deputy of Anatoly Chubais, then he became the head of the Alemar investment financial corporation (he brought it from the regional, Novosibirsk level to the federal level, for why he lured CFO Dmitry Zhurba from RAO).
These appointments were announced at the second meeting of the government council on nanotechnology by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who oversees the industry in the government. He also said that the corporation's supervisory board would include 14 people: five candidates were nominated by the country's president, five by the government, and two by each chamber of parliament.
Vladimir Putin has already introduced to the government five members of the state corporation’s supervisory board. This is the director of the Institute of Crystallography named after. A.V. Shubnikova RAS, Director of the federal government institution Russian Scientific Center "Kurchatov Institute" Mikhail Kovalchuk, Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Vladimir Nazarov, First Vice-President of the United Aircraft Corporation, General Director of the Sukhoi Aviation Holding Company Mikhail Pogosyan, Deputy Head of the Expert Directorate of the President of the Russian Federation Vasily Popik and Anatoly Chubais. In addition to them, the supervisory board included the head of the Ministry of Economic Development German Gref and the Minister of Industry and Energy Viktor Khristenko, the chairman of the Development Bank Vladimir Dmitriev, the head of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs Andrei Kokoshin, the deputy chairman of the Federation Council Dmitry Mezentsev, the co-owner of the Onexim group Mikhail Prokhorov, the head of the Duma committee on economic policy, entrepreneurship and tourism Evgeny Fedorov and Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Science Viktor Shudegov.
The corporation can act as a government customer placing orders for government needs. In addition to the supervisory board, the state corporation will have a board, an audit commission and an advisory scientific and technical council consisting of nanotechnology experts. Leonid Melamed intends to approve the structure of the corporation in two to three months.
The primary tasks of the state corporation are technical regulation, drawing up technical regulations, standardization of products using nanotechnology, which are already appearing on the market. According to Mr. Melamed, the tasks facing the corporation are comparable to those solved by the country's nuclear and space industries. The authorized capital of the new structure is 30 billion rubles. Today in Russia more than 10 billion rubles are spent annually on scientific and technical research in the field of nanoindustry alone. The emerging promising industry will receive approximately 130 billion rubles from the budget in the next year and a half; by 2015, this figure could grow to 200 billion. So Mr. Melamed will have to become the operational manager of huge budget funds.
With such a high-tech and knowledge-intensive scale, the new industry will require significant financial and organizational resources, says Sergei Ivanov. This is what the state corporation will do. First of all, innovative projects that already have a foundation will be financed (both by the state and private business), and in the future their commercialization is possible. Among the promising projects, the management of the state corporation names special steels, optoelectronics, hydrogen energy, and new medical diagnostic equipment. As a result, Mr. Fursenko believes, the volume of the Russian nanotechnology market should increase from several billion rubles to tens of billions of dollars in two to three years.
At a meeting of the government council on technology, Sergei Ivanov supported the proposal to create a specialized department for nanotechnology at the Russian Academy of Sciences. He explained his position as follows: “Interdisciplinarity and the participation of various scientific fields in the field of nanotechnology require concentrated efforts.” It is likely that a nanotechnology center will be created in the near future. Its task is to ensure the collective use by researchers of the unique scientific equipment with which the center will be equipped. The Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences already has a special commission chaired by Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov.
Research and development work in the field of nanotechnology and nanomaterials is carried out within the framework of the federal programs “Research and development in priority areas of development of the scientific and technological complex of Russia for 2007-2012”, “Development of the military-industrial complex for 2007-2010” years and for the period until 2115", "National technological base for 2007-2011". In July of this year, the president signed the federal law “On the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation” (“Nanotech”).