A visit from Professor Alexander Shelupanov

Prof. Alexander Shelupanov, of Tomsk State University of Radioelectronics and Control Systems (TUSUR) visited the Foundation on Thursday (15 May) to give a talk on his Centre for Innovation. The Centre is one of 17 Centres for Innovation in the Russian Federation and is backed by the new President, Medvedev. Tomsk is also one of the four Technology Innovation Zones in Russia.

The centre has developed a new and highly innovative approach to higher education, which is traditionally very structured in Russia. The new approach focuses on giving students general soft skills (team work etc.) and experience of the workplace and, specifically, allows students to generate and develop innovative projects that could, if successful, become new businesses.

The idea was to shape the higher education structure in order to make students more ready for the workplace through a period of ‘Group Project Learning’. Tutors help students create ideas for development. Diverse teams of students are then set up to develop these ideas fully. Successful projects move to the Student Business Incubator where they are supported in developing a full business, securing start-up funding etc. The idea is to create a ‘generation of new business creators’. The centre has created 15 companies in 3 years.

One project developed a portable cardigram machine, the results of which could be sent by mobile or email to a processing center which would provide an initial diagnosis. This addressed the problem of large rural population without convenient access to medical treatment of this kind. The Russian Ministry of Health now looking at replicating these devices.

Students who do not end up creating a business at the end of the project still benefit from the employability skills and business training they have received. Therefore the goal of the centre now is to increase the number of students taking part in GPL to 50-60%.