Tomsk State University, together with the Defense Research and Development Organization of the Ministry of Defense of India (DRDO), organized the International Conference “XX International Workshop on HEMs-2025: Future Trends in Propulsion Technologies” in India. More than 300 experts in the field of creating new materials and technologies for ensuring security fr om Russia and India participated in the event. The TSU team demonstrated advanced developments in the field of high-tech materials, AI, radio vision and humanitarian demining.
The HEMs-2025 conference is dedicated to modern and promising areas of high-energy materials. It was held at the DRDO Advanced Center for Energy Materials (ACEM) (Nasik, India).
The TSU team included the experts of the world-class research center “New Special-Purpose Materials” and its industrial partner “Altai” (Biysk), as well as the strategic project of TSU “Security Technologies” (Priority 2030) and a large scientific project “Development of the fundamental foundations of new life safety technologies based on the integration of multimodal radio wave and optical remote sensing, and artificial intelligence”.
Alexander Vorozhtsov, Director of the world-class research center and head of the TSU Security Technologies strategic project was a keynote speaker at the plenary session wh ere he shared the key goals and projects of the center.
– TSU world-class research center creates high-tech technologies and materials for solving security problems: from the development of materials and methods for detecting hazardous substances to humanitarian demining. Our goal is to bring developments to low-tonnage production and transfer to organizations operating in the real sector of the economy. International cooperation is important for us to ensure the export of technologies – said Alexander Vorozhtsov.
The employees of the center presented their main activities – compositional, biomedical and high-energy materials. A separate area is AI methods for molecular design of materials.
Foreign colleagues were interested in the developments of TSU in the field of composite materials, radio vision, spectroscopy, humanitarian demining and AI. They are designed to counter technogenic, biogenic threats, terrorism and other sources of danger to strengthen the defense capability and national security of Russia.
The participants also agreed on the development of cooperation with DRDO and the advanced center for energy materials – ACEM (Nasik), the laboratory for high-energy materials research (HEMRL, Pune) and with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (Mumbai).
In June 2025, a delegation of the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military and military-technical cooperation visited TSU. The group was led by Chandrika Kaushik, co-chair of the sub-group on research and development. At the HEMs-2025 conference, she made a presentation at the Inaugural Session.
In 2026, the HEMs conference will be held in Tomsk at Tomsk State University.
For reference: The world-class research center “New Special-Purpose Materials” was established by the decision of the Commission for Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation in May 2025 within the framework of the national project “New Materials and Chemistry”. The coordinator of the center is Tomsk State University. The Center development program is officially supported by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Federal Medical and Biological Agency of the Russian Federation, and the administration of Tomsk Region.
The key activities of the Center include the development of technologies for the production of composite materials and products based on them, high-energy materials and systems, new biomedical materials, as well as the use of artificial intelligence tools for the development of materials.