Skolkovo Tech Gets Going

Russia's Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology has a new administrator and has announced partnerships, ScienceInsider reports. Skolkovo Tech was created as "an attempt to create a Silicon Valley-style technology hothouse on the outskirts of Moscow," Science reported in 2010.

Those research efforts will now be led by Edward Seidel, who led the mathematical and physical sciences section of the US National Science Foundation. Seidel tells ScienceInsider that Skolkovo has "an interdisciplinary structure that preserves excellence in each field and an emphasis on innovation as well as basic research." He adds that the challenge will be meeting the goal to have 200 faculty members by 2020.

Skolkovo Tech also announced three teams — focusing on infectious disease and RNA therapeutics, stem cell research, and electrochemical energy storage — that are to receive $10 million a year for up to five years each to pursue their research.


Skolkovo is a new Russian

Skolkovo is a new Russian enterprise on collision with the Russian Academy of Science. What an American science administrator could do is beyond me.
Michael Lerman, Ph.D., M.D.