subscribe to news EXPOCENTRE sums up the Year of Science and Technology

A strategic session entitled "The Year of Science and Technology through the Prism of Congress and Exhibition Events: Results, Challenges, and Prospects" was held at Expocentre Fairgrounds in a hybrid format. The session was held in the framework of the meeting of the Committee on Exhibition, Fair and Congress Activities of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Participants of the event discussed the results of the Year of Science and Technologies: what has been done, and what is still to be done, as the interest to scientific subject, introduction of the newest scientific and technical developments and innovative technologies into production does not weaken and does not end with the calendar year.

The panel discussion was moderated by Vladimir Kononov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Science and Higher Education and Chairman of the NTI Expo Organising Committee (Research-Technology-Innovations Expo), and Alexey Vyalkin, Director General of EXPOCENTRE AO and Chairman of the CCI of Russia Committee on Exhibition, Fair and Congress Activities.

"The year 2021 was a special one for the congress and exhibition industry. In connection with the ban on holding mass events, we had to restructure in the moment, look for new and effective ways of communicating with society and interested parties," Vladimir Kononov emphasised in his speech. “And I think we have succeeded.”

He reminded that five years ago the State Duma Committee on Education and Science, the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Expocentre established the NTI Expo project.

It is a permanent platform where international and Russian congresses, exhibitions, expert and public events and forums are organised.

Over the time of its existence, the NTI Expo project has taken a new shape, and has expanded considerably in terms of audience coverage, Vladimir Kononov stressed.

The Year of Science and Technology was an excellent opportunity to draw public attention to the importance of scientific activity and to move forward with solutions to established issues in this field, consolidating the country's status as one of the leaders in scientific and technological development, says Maxim Fateyev, Vice President of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

According to him, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry is actively involved in promoting Russian scientific and technical developments and their commercialisation, working closely with the scientific, expert and business communities.

"The CCI actively cooperates with the RAS to support scientific and technological projects. The main areas of our work include expert support for large-scale projects, commercialisation of scientific developments, and coordination in the development of external relations and international contacts," said Maxim Fateyev. He especially emphasised the role of exhibitions and congresses in popularising and promoting innovative technologies. "The exhibition and congress activity in the Year of Science and Technology, despite all the difficulties, was as rich and effective as possible," Maxim Fateyev said. “In the current circumstances, the tools of exhibitions and congresses can and should be used to revive trade relations and restore the economy as a whole as soon as possible”.

Elena Druzhinina, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, spoke in detail about the congress and exhibition events held during the Year. According to her, the programme was very extensive.

"The year was unprecedented in terms of the number of events held, there were more than 5 thousand of them, and all regions were actively involved," said Elena Druzhinina. According to her, over 11 million people attended the events of the Year of Science and Technology. The events received extensive media coverage.

The deputy minister cited interesting data from a VCIOM survey. According to the survey, 59% of citizens believe that the prestige of scientists in society is growing, 64% of parents said that they think it is attractive for their children to work in science, 78% of parents supported their children's work in technical and engineering fields, and over 60% of schoolchildren feel proud of Russian science.

Mikhail Ivanov, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, expressed confidence that congress and exhibition events have a significant impact on the development of the business climate, on the promotion of domestic products, contribute to export growth and investment attraction.

For the Ministry of Industry and Trade congress and exhibition events are one of the priorities, the ministry provides information and organisational support for many exhibition and congress events.

"The presentation of our companies at foreign exhibitions is a great opportunity to introduce competitive products to foreign markets," Mikhail Ivanov is confident.  - To stimulate exporters' participation, mechanisms have been developed and are already in place to compensate our companies for part of the costs of renting equipment, exhibition space and registration fees. The REC is actively engaged in this".

According to Mikhail Ivanov, in 2022 the volume of budget appropriations that will be allocated to stimulate participation in exhibitions abroad will be about 1.5 billion rubles.

The deputy minister expressed gratitude to EXPOCENTRE AO for its contribution to the development of various industries. "In accordance with the consolidated plan of our ministry we supported more than 35 events held at this venue in 2021," Mikhail Ivanov noted.

Maxim Parshin, Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation, stressed that for almost a year the IT industry has been living in fundamentally new conditions for it. He reminded that last year the law on tax benefits for the IT industry was adopted. According to him, there were some fears that this would reduce tax revenues to the budget, but this did not happen. Moreover, preliminary data for 9 months of this year show that the IT industry grew by 38.5%. Taxes paid by the industry to the budget increased by 18.5 percent in aggregate.

This year, we expect a 20 percent growth in exports," said Maxim Parshin. "And this is despite the sanctions, which are affecting our companies quite strongly, especially those specialising in digital security.

Alexey Vyalkin, Director General of EXPOCENTRE AO, Chairman of the CCI of Russia’s Committee on Exhibition, Fair and Congress Activities, noted that the Year of Science and Technology at EXPOCENTRE Fairgrounds was intensive and diverse and passed at a worthy level.

"Major international exhibition and congress events held at EXPOCENTRE Fairgrounds demonstrated the key importance for promotion of the latest scientific and technological developments of Russian high-tech companies," he said.    

Alexey Vyalkin reminded that the Plan of the Year of Science and Technology approved by the government included such large-scale projects of EXPOCENTRE AO as Russian Week of High Technologies held in June, Russian Industry Week held in October and Russian Health Care Week just ended in December. All of them are also included in the NTI Expo project established several years ago by the State Duma Committee for Science and Higher Education, the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and EXPOCENTRE AO, which aims to promote government programmes in science and technology, education, the digital economy, industry and energy.  

The Year of Science and Technology paid special attention to the support of scientific activities, mentoring and employment of young medical scientists and specialists, said Alexey Vyalkin.

Thus, one of the central events of the conference programme that ended on the eve of Russian Health Care Week was the first Interdisciplinary Forum "Young Medicine", held jointly with the Filatov International Foundation for Biomedical Technologies.  

"The forum aims not only to support medical students and young scientists, but also to develop mentoring, create decent jobs for young professionals in leading Russian companies, and introduce the student community to innovative developments and state-of-the-art equipment that they will work on after they graduate," said Alexey Vyalkin.

In the Year of Science and Technology, EXPOCENTRE's close ties with academic and research centres, cutting-edge industry clusters and universities training specialists in various fields have been further fruitfully developed.

This developing cooperation is also due to the fact that literally all of EXPOCENTRE's industry exhibitions are connected with demonstrating and promoting the latest scientific and technical developments, innovative technologies and cutting-edge ideas, and in terms of their objectives they fit organically into the Year of Science and Technology. 

Special attention at EXPOCENTRE’s exhibitions is also paid to supporting innovative companies and start-ups. For example, the Startup ChemZone, which allows startups and small innovative enterprises to showcase their promising inventions and projects to a wide range of potential investors and large market players, has been successfully tested at the Khimia exhibition.  

At this year's Metalloobrabotka exhibition, a similar start-up zone for developers in the field of additive technologies and Industry 4.0 was formed together with specialists from Skolkovo. EXPOCENTRE AO acted as a link between the unique offerings and investors interested in developing new directions.

Evgeny Podlipensky, Deputy Minister of Investment, Industry and Science of the Moscow Region, noted that more than 400 events had been held within the framework of the Year of Science and Technology in the Moscow Region.  He reminded that, at present, a significant part of the country's scientific and technical potential is concentrated in the Moscow Region. The region is among the leaders in the rating for involvement of regions in the Year of Science and Technology events.

Anatoly Geller, Deputy Head of the Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service, drew attention to the way science is implemented at hazardous sites. "One of the most interesting high-tech developments is the remote monitoring system. Its implementation will allow the supervised industrial entities of the Russian Federation to be more competitive and less accident-prone," said the speaker.

Alexander Osadchuk, Head of the Information Systems Department of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, spoke about the activities carried out by the military during the Year of Science and Technology. Thus, according to him, during the Forum "Army-2021" a thematic cluster of technologies of artificial intelligence, radio electronic and information technologies was deployed, more than 211 scientific events were organised in which more than 12 thousand people took part. One of the landmark events was the Congress "Strategic Leadership in the Digital Age and Artificial Intelligence Technology".

Konstantin Mogilevsky, Executive Director of the History of the Fatherland Foundation, is confident that the Year of Science and Technology has given impetus to the further development of the humanities. He reminded that next year we celebrate an important date for Russian history - the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great.

Natalia Kasperskaya, Chair of the Board of Russian Software and President of the InfoWatch group of companies - spoke about the achievements and most popular technologies in the field of software. "The software industry has grown considerably over the last year. There are more than 15,000 ICT companies in Moscow, employing over 500,000 people. But at the same time, there is a shortage of staff due to rising developer salaries. This is a big challenge for Russian companies.  But we have to cope with all the challenges, as we are facing the task of technological leadership in the country," said Natalia Kasperskaya.

The topic of domestic software development was continued by Ilya Massukh, Director of the Centre of Competences for ICT Import Substitution. "Six years ago, the first Russian Software - Effective Solutions forum demonstrated Russian developments that no one had ever seen before. In that time, the solutions have grown to a mature level. This year, we held the forum under the auspices of Russian software hardware solutions used in remote locations, on Elbrus and Lake Baikal.

For the coming year, the government is targeting the use of new technologies related to industry, the use of software tools for design, production management, and mathematical modelling. Although we are lagging behind here. But there are Russian achievements, which are actively applied. And we hope to make the use of new technologies of domestic production for the Russian industry one of the basic directions at the next forum," the speaker stressed.

Olga Kochetkova, Head of Strategic Development and Innovation Department of the Ministry of Economic Development, noted that the key initiative of the Ministry of Economic Development in the Year of Science and Technology was an experimental-legal regime for drones, defining the future of technology. They also talked about artificial intelligence, the initiative to support startups and the Open Innovations Forum and the Artificial Intelligence Conference this year.

Alexander Gorbatko, Deputy Head of the Moscow City Information Technologies Department, described what technical solutions are implemented to create a favourable operating mode for telecom operators within Moscow. The Department traditionally supports the Sviaz exhibition held at Expocentre Fairgrounds and, according to the speaker, promises to be bigger next year.

In the Year of Science and Technology, Russian universities held a large number of congress and exhibition events to showcase their own developments. Boris Kostishko, Rector of Ulyanovsk State University, told about it at the session.

Vadim Pavlov, Director General of the Ulyanovsk Region Agency for Technological Development, introduced to the participants in the meeting the projects of the Ulyanovsk region in the field of science and technology. According to him, the number of regional companies implementing innovations has increased from 12% to 28% since 2018.

Alina Boldyreva, Director of the Marketing Department of FINVAL Group and President of the Women in Industry Association, assessed the efficiency of participation in exhibitions and presented the announcement of the conference programme of the Russian Industry Week 2022 to be held at Expocentre Fairgrounds.

Elena Asanova, Director for Coordination and Market Engagement of the Aluminium Association, spoke about participation in EXPOCENTRE’s exhibitions.

Vitaly Bagan, Vice Rector for scientific work at MIPT, Oleg Zhdaneyev, Deputy Director General of the Russian Energy Agency, and Tatiana Anisimova, Head of the Congress and Exhibition Department of VDNH, spoke about the events held in their organisations and companies during the Year of Science and Technology.

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