"SkolTech" - a Russian technical university under construction
In July 2012 Mats Hanson was appointed to "Dean of Education" on "SkolTech"* in Moscow. When Mats now in December leaves his role as Vice Dean of ECE school, he will increase his time at "SkolTech"* and retain certain service at KTH.
This is what Mats himself has to say about the Russian project that will be his main focus:
- When I first was asked in June, I thought it sounded interesting but did not know what I was getting into. Now after a few months of work, I understand the tremendous importance the Russian giant investment has and it's a challenge I like. The goal is to build an international top university in Russia that is strongly influenced by the EU. The focus should be on innovation, research and education.
He continues:
- MIT in Boston has been awarded a major contract to help us build research centers, training programs and modern infrastructure. It means that I will also spend time at MIT in Boston for the overall plan activities together with his colleagues at MIT.
is responsible for the development of training programs and recruitment of motivated and competent teachers. Moreover, his challenge is to build a modern learning environment where the physical and virtual environment are designed to interact optimally in an educational and stimulating way.
The start was a year ago and everything has been built up from scratch. It has adopted 20 students who will be able to go a year at international universities such as MIT, Imperial College London, Hong Kong University of Technology, ETH, as it currently is neither buildings or teacher in "SkolTech"*.
The structure of the university will include five educational programs and a number of research centers that will deliver courses and projects. 2015, at least 5 Master´s programmes with 300 students will be developed and have 400 Ph.D. students (see schematic structure below).
2015 is also the year when the university and campus will be ready and 15 research centers will have been established. The large, outer ring built in phase 1 and is over 200 meters in diameter. It will house research labs in Energy, BioTech, Space and IT, and educational facilities.
In summary, this project is certainly interesting to follow and we will certainly need to return to it in the future.
