Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Bauman Technical University’s Plasma Technology Centre, Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov said that the Government has allocated over 40 billion roubles to university science for 2013-2015. The funds are envisaged by the relevant state programmes and will be spent on equipping laboratories, paying salaries to top specialists and funding research.

Mr Surkov emphasised that support for academic science is no less important.

“The potential of the Russian Academy of Sciences is tremendous and it will be used in full measure,” he said.

The Government will also take part in co-financing research by private and public companies – both directly and by granting tax breaks.

“These funds are running into the tens of billions of roubles,” he said. “Scientists and inventors will have interesting and well-paid jobs no matter where they work – an academic institute, a university, or an R&D department of a private company. University, academic, and corporate researchers are of equal importance to us. They form a strategic trinity of economic and social development.”

Mr Surkov also called the formation of the Plasma Technology Centre a shining example of this trinity.

“The pooling of efforts by the university, the Academy of Sciences and private capital, plus cooperation with top foreign research centres, has produced outstanding results,” he said.

Mr Surkov added that he is confident that the centre will make major scientific discoveries and develop unique and useful technologies.

In conclusion, he thanked businessmen Mikhail Gutseriyev, Alexander Abramov, Mikhail Prokhorov, Ziyavudin Magomedov and Viktor Vekselberg for their generous assistance to domestic science and urged all “capitalists to follow suit.”