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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Kulikov, as you know, you are being offered the opportunity to head one of our largest development structures – RUSNANO. This is a key area of development not only for Russia but also the entire global economy without any exaggeration. I will not go into details right now. I am sure you know what I am talking about.

The RUSNANO Corporation was established in 2007 to bring new nanotechnology products to the stage of industrial production. We will talk now about the problems, but in general, much has been done during these years.

For the most part, investment was made through relevant funds that embraced 12 industries. This is cross-cutting technology that is being used practically in the entire economy and all industries: metal processing, chemistry, instrument-making, healthcare, petrochemistry, metallurgy, power generation, machine-building, electronics, optoelectronics, telecommunications, building materials, biotechnology and so on. Let me repeat that these are key areas for the development of the entire global economy as well as our economy, including defence branches. To my knowledge, you are now working in the Military-Industrial Commission, and are aware of all the opportunities created by nanotechnology.

Much has been done during this time. A total of 115 companies have been established and are functioning in 38 regions of the Russian Federation. They employ over 40,000 people in new high-technology jobs. Investment in projects with the participation of partners amounted to 590 billion rubles, while sales exceeded two trillion rubles.

I know and I am sure you know as well that there are problems that require special attention from the corporation’s top management and the Government of the Russian Federation, but we will talk about this in more detail.

What do you think about this area of work and your tasks in the new job offered to you?

Sergei Kulikov: Thank you, Mr President.

Obviously, this is an extremely important job, a dream for any technology investor, not to mention a manager. It is an ambitious and unconventional task – to create products and conditions for their sale at an accelerated pace. I believe they are our main national advantages. This is a creative goal. It amounts to developing and designing new materials. Our immediate task is still to learn how to turn ideas into products and sales into life cycle contracts with service. We must learn to turn current experimental production into industrial production, which is a new dimension.

As I am seeing today, primarily working with Rosatom, is that we are very short of upscale mathematical modelling of material properties, which could substantially reduce the time of designing and reverse engineering. I consider it a very important competitive instrument. The average time for obtaining a new material here is from five to ten years. It could go down to two or three years. In other words, we must make mathematical calculations prior to model and full-scale tests. The current calculating capacities allow us to do this. We have a very strong mathematical school and are excellent at compiling algorithms.

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