On May 16 the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI has held the regular meeting of the Academic Council. Among the issues, submitted for review by the collegial body of the University, was approval of strategic academic units as the core of the modern structure of the University.

A large-scale work on structure modernization was founded on the need to address the tasks set before the University by its major employer – the State Corporation “Rosatom”. In the result MEPhI should become a strong international University able to professionally solve issues of human resources support for the challenges the Corporation faces: training of highly qualified specialists and world-class experts for the nuclear industry.

MEPhI has chosen orientation to major Federal programs as one of the ways to reorganize the higher educational establishment into the world scientific-educational center. The first step was participation in innovative educational program. In 2007 following the results of the program’s contest the University was among 40 universities to receive public funding. This enabled MEPhI to significantly improve the quality of educational and research activities through the acquisition of new scientific equipment, advanced training of personnel, preparation of new teaching materials etc. Success of the selected policy was recognized by the designation of MEPhI as the National Research University in 2008.

The chosen strategy of MEPhI development received its further development through the participation in the Program of competitiveness increase. The implementation of a roadmap has implied a number of serious changes, including optimization of the University’s structure; the preliminary step was the creation of 10 centers of excellence, which systematized and merged those areas which historically were strong in the nuclear University.

In the framework of further analysis the centers were transformed into five large institutions – strategic academic units, which incorporates almost all aspects of University activities and which should ensure close link between science, education and industrial innovations.

On the 19th of March 2016 MEPhI presented these new academic units to the International Council of the 5-100 Project (a Program of increasing competitiveness of Russian universities). The Council recommended all five unites to be funded by the Ministry of Education and Science:

• Institute of Nuclear Physics and Engineering;
• Institute for Laser and Plasma Technologies;
• Institute of Engineering and Physics for Biomedicine;
• Institute for Nanoengineering in Electronics, Spintronics and Photonics;
• Institute of Cyber Intelligent Systems.

Speaking before members of the MEPhI Academic Council, the First vice-rector of MEPhI O.V. Nagornov and the head of the MEPhI Program of increasing competitiveness M.G. Ganchenkova told in details about each newly created unit, focusing on their scientific, international and educational components. They drew attention to the necessity of institutions to implement key performance indicators of the Program such as the number of publications in indexed databases, citation index, share of foreign students and professors and etc.

According to first Vice-rector, transformation of MEPhI does not end here. Its final result should be those changes that will help MEPhI to move to a new level of development in 2020 and take its rightful place among the world's leading universities.

In the framework of the meeting the Academic Council also considered a number of very important issues, the most enjoyable of which was the rewarding of birthday people and honored employees of MEPhI. The Academic Council considered issues on various aspects: 75th anniversary of the University in 2017, personnel training on economic and financial security, changes in educational standards, increase of fire safety, property issues, training costs, and others.