Despite the flurry of negative exchanges between top U.S. and Russian government officials since the onset of the Crimea crisis in Ukraine, the state of Minnesota is continuing to promote a US-Russian innovation conference planned long ago for the city of St. Paul. Additional supporters of the event include the US-Russia Business Council; RVC-USA (the US-based branch of Russia’s RVC, the state-owned fund of funds); and several other organizations.
Scheduled for March 25-26, the conference will be preceded on March 24 by a Pre-Conference Innovation Partnership “Matchmaking” event at the Science Museum of Minnesota.
In addition, the office of the Minnesota Secretary of State is putting together site visits and tours of innovative companies, research centers, universities and community-based organizations in the region.
As Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, told Marchmont News earlier this week, “this Innovation Conference will bring together [players from both sides] to share best practices, review existing collaborations, and to explore new ways to strengthen US-Russian relations through mutually beneficial trade, investment, research and commercialization.”
“The world is facing increasingly more complex problems. The past 10 years have become standard for excepting cross-disciplinary approaches and successes. The next breakthrough will come from cross-cultural collaboration,” Ritchie stated last month in an exchange with RVC-USA.
Maryland and Nizhny Novogorod universities join forces
Another example of Russian-US cooperation is offered by the Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod (UNN) and the Maryland State University (MSU). Following three years of joint efforts through the EURECA program, financed by the US Russia Foundation (USRF), the two universities have agreed to expand their efforts in 2014 to send up to 12 UNN high tech spin out enterprises to the MSU International Incubator during this year.
The next group of spin outs will arrive to Maryland on April 21st and will be joined by Kendrick White, UNN’s new Vice Rector for Innovation, in a bid to establish partnerships which can help develop commercialization strategies for the Russian products entry to the US market.
In addition, as a result of the 2013 UNN & MSU EURECA program’s joint work, UNN will send a delegation of top university officials, including the UNN Rector, Evgeny Chuprunov, to join the US Russia Innovation Week conference in Minnesota.
At the conference, UNN will be presenting “the successful results of its cooperation agreement to other US and Russian universities as a model of cooperation which can be easily replicated to foster direct partnerships,” White said in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
For further information on these activities please feel free to contact directly Mr. Mark Ritchie mark[at]minnesotaworldsfair[dot]com and Mr. Kendrick White k.white[at]marchmont[dot]ru
