On the 27th of February a regular meeting of the MEPhI Academic Board was held. By tradition the event began with the awarding of distinguished university employees. The Director of the MEPhI Institute of Industrial Nuclear Technology Professor E.M.Glagovsky was awarded a badge of the State Corporation "Rosatom" "For Merit to the nuclear industry". The Academic Board also congratulated a member of the Scientific and Educational Center "NEVOD" D.M. Gromushkin on the Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences with a prize as a result of the competition in 2013 in the field of nuclear physics for the series of works “Installation for registration of neutron component ShAL”.
A number of important issues were put for discussion. One of them is an increase in the publication activity of the MEPhI educational and research staff. There was mentioned a steady increase in the number of articles cited in international scientific publication databases “Web of Science” and “Scopus”. For example from 2007 the number of publications in the “Web of Science” has increased more than 2 times.
Also the topic of attracting foreign scientists for joint educational activities was discussed. It’s planned to increase the number of foreign professors in the MEPhI educational and research staff up to 14 % by 2020. Joint educational activities will include the following: the guidance on the student research works of different levels, as well as master's and postgraduate dissertations (including via remote technologies), preparation of joint teaching materials; lectures delivering, consultations, etc.
Special attention was given to the January report of the Russian Federation Government to the President Vladimir Putin with a list of 16 priority research missions which solution requires the usage of opportunities of federal common use centers. Some of these missions are of interest for the university. In this way SEC “NEVOD” and MEPhI Nanocenter can participate in federal funding of common use centers.
Also the Russian Science Fund was discussed, which in February notified of an open public competition for grants “Implementation of fundamental scientific researches and exploratory scientific researches by individual groups”. Each grant is up to 5 million rubles annually. MEPhI plans to select 25-30 applications for the participation in the competition.
One more topic for the Academic Board discussion was the establishment of the new Department “Computer engineering modeling” at the faculty “F”. A candidate for the post of the department head is the Doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, Professor A.A. Soldatov. Activity of the new department will focus on the specialists training for the calculation support of power equipment at all stages of the life cycle (from design to decommissioning) in terms of ensuring the structural integrity and reliability. The main task of the department is to provide organizations of nuclear engineering industry with qualified personnel, combining knowledge of related disciplines.
