On August 11, a meeting of the Council for Science and Education was held in Novosibirsk at the site of the Siberian Ring Photon Source (SKIF) Collective Use Center, chaired by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was attended by the rector of SFedU Inna Shevchenko.

The participants discussed the development of scientific infrastructure, the use of AI in science and the training of personnel to work on mega-installations.

Vladimir Putin emphasized the need to create strong universities and research centers in the regions, as well as to combine the efforts of scientific and educational institutions to solve common problems.

"We have a whole huge infrastructure, and it requires a special type of people who can design, then create, and then work on these installations in different positions. Here we will rely on universities such as Southern Federal University and other universities that participate in the "pilot" - they have more freedom", - Valery Falkov, Minister of Science and Higher Education, noted.

For SFedU , these areas are already part of its strategic development. The University is developing a model of a research ground where technologies are simultaneously created and specialists are trained for their development. Together with the Kurchatov Institute Research Center, SFU is creating the world's first smart station for synchrotron sources controlled by AI, and the AI agents Digital Researcher and Digital Technologist make it possible to shorten the research cycle from months to hours.