Universities of Saxony-Anhalt are interested in cooperation with St Petersburg University

‘Our university is a classical one, the range of academic programmes and research areas that are being implemented is therefore extremely diverse: from the ancient languages ​​of the East to advanced research in medicine,’ said Elena Chernova, Senior Vice-Rector of St Petersburg University, opening the meeting. She suggested discussing the development of joint research with universities of the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. She also added that the successful experience of Magdeburg University in commercialisation of innovations and scientific activity is of particular interest to St Petersburg University.  

Jörg Bagdahn, the President of Anhalt University, for his part, introduced the meeting participants to the priority areas of university education. Among them are engineering, materials science, computer science, mathematics, as well as agriculture.

Sergey Mikushev, Vice-Rector for Research of St Petersburg University, outlined to the members of the delegation the areas of scientific interest that are relevant to the University. He highlighted biomedicine, ‘In this area, we have achieved some success. Over the past year we have published more than 30 publications in the journals of the Nature Publishing Group.’ The Vice-Rector said that the University began to concentrate efforts in this area not so long ago. The merger of St Petersburg University with the Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies in 2018 has been successful.

Jürgen Ude, the State Secretary at the Ministry of Economy, Science and Digitalisation of the Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt, suggested exchanging specialists in this area. He talked about the clinic at the University of Magdeburg, where neurodegenerative diseases are successfully studied.

Concluding the meeting and summing up its results, Elena Chernova said that today 15 agreements with various German universities are in force at St Petersburg University, and the University has no plans to stop here. ‘We have the largest academic exchange with German universities and the largest number of joint publications with German scientists. In this sense, your interest in cooperation in biomedicine and human health is a response to our interests. I think we will find common ground here, as well as in the field of materials science and, possibly, agricultural sciences. At present, the issue of obtaining a grant for genetic research in agriculture is currently being discussed,’ she concluded.