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MU SET TO OPEN WINDOW TO WORLD OF RUSSIAN RESEARCH;
FIRST TIME EVER THAT WESTERN WORLD WILL SEE SOVIET TECHNIQUES, DATA
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For the first time ever, American researchers, scientists and private companies will have a chance to look into the world of Russian research, which has been closed to the Western world until this year, through a University of Missouri-Columbia satellite series featuring 12 top Russian scientists.
"This research and the methods that were used in the former Soviet Union will help Western scientists and engineers to see and understand how Russians developed their technologies," said James Thompson, dean of the MU College of Engineering. "This will not only vastly improve our research through the collaboration, but also will allow us to take the Russian research one step further and help put it to commercial, non-military use."
The series is a result of a 25-year relationship between Thompson and the Russian researchers. Thompson was the first Westerner to be invited to Tomsk, the Russian closed "science city," and while at MU, Thompson initiated the collaboration with the former Soviet Union. The deal was finalized last year when Gennady Mesyats, senior vice president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, visited MU and signed an Agreement of Collaboration while delivering a satellite address on the commercial applications of pulsed power. More than 50 laboratories, universities and companies throughout the world received that address.
"Since much of the work by the former Soviet Union had defense implications, Russian science developed in isolation," said Dick Potter, director of engineering extension. "Often Russian researchers took different approaches and followed different paths than Western scientists. This series is designed to showcase research from some of the finest research institutes in Russia before it is lost."
The Russian research will be made available through a series of programs that will be broadcast via satellite from the MU campus. Currently, the program is set up for a series of 12 lectures by the most noted Russian scientists who will describe the commercial applications of the research and the ways in which the research was accomplished. The series will open April 15, 1998, and will go through 1999.
"It is very beneficial for us to showcase our research throughout the United States and the Western World," Mesyats said. "Not only will our U.S. colleagues be able to make use of our research, but this will allow us an opportunity to discuss differences in our methods and develop better ways for all of us to work together in helping solve some of the problems we face today."
Vladimir Fortov, acting minister of Science and Technologies and close adviser to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, will be the first speaker on April 15, and Zhores Alferov, director of the world's finest semiconductor labs, will follow with the second speech. They will discuss intense shock waves, semiconductors and optical media.
Other research topics featured in the series will include:
-- High performance alloys -- Russian research on aluminum and titanium alloys is leading to building better lightweight, but extremely strong, metal for aircraft and better golf clubs.
-- High performance composites -- formerly used in defense-related research, such research, once used for making missile bodies, was classified until recently and American scientists will be the first to see it.
-- Material forming technologies -- Russian researchers have refined certain material forming technologies -- technologies used to create materials such as sheet metal -- that result in stronger materials and are much cheaper than other methods.
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