Cooperation between K(V)FU and Riken is strategic, President of Tatarstan says

President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov has today met with the Riken physical and chemical research institute president, 2001 chemistry Nobel Prize winner, Ryoji Noyori.
The meeting took place in the House of Government. Attendees from the Tatarstan side were education and science minister Albert Gilmutdinov, President of Tatarstan Department of External Relations and aide to President on international affairs Iskander Muflikhanov, Kazan (Volga) Federal University rector Ilshat Gafurov and others.
The delegation representing Japan’s largest physical and chemical research institute, Riken, led by its president, arrived in Kazan on Wednesday, to open a joint research and laboratory facility on the grounds of KFU. The KFU-Riken complex that includes femtosecond spectroscopy, strongly correlated systems physics, as well as thin-film systems synthesis and analysis, laboratories, was officially opened in the presence of Ryoji Noyori and Ilshat Gafurov.
In 2008, Kazan University and Riken signed a partnership agreement within an international programme of joint post-graduate education. The main goal is to train specialists of the highest qualification in physics. The work will be supervised by Japanese and Russian scientists. Besides, a KFU rector’ soffice meeting in 2011 made the decision to confer the title Honorary Doctor of Kazan University on Professor Ryoji Noyori.
At today’s meeting, Rustam Minnikhanov, while welcoming the visitors, remarked that cooperation between Kazan University and Riken had in the recent years been very helpful and efficient. He described the cooperation as strategic. Opening the KFU-Riken research facilities is another impressive event in the republic’s scientific life, the Tatarstan leader enhanced.