"All projects are created twice.
First mentally, then physically.
The key to creativity is starting with a clear vision of the result you want to achieve."
Stephen Covey

Eduard Galazhinskiy, Rector of Tomsk State University, continues discussing the project-analytical session dedicated to refining TSU's target model for 2030. This blog entry focuses on TSU’s strategic projects.

— Professor Galazhinskiy, how will the currently implemented strategic projects evolve by 2030, and will any new projects be launched?

— Let’s not forget that 2030 is just five years away. Our current strategic projects were initially conceived as long-term strategies with significant potential. Now, the focus must be on fully realizing that potential rather than proliferating additional initiatives.

At the session, Leonid Sukhikh, acting Rector of Tomsk Polytechnic University, remarked that TSU’s strategic projects represent one of the strongest visions among leading universities because they all incorporate engineering components.

For instance:

• The Global Earth Changes project includes geoengineering.
• The Engineering Biology project, as its name suggests, involves not only bioengineering but also genomic engineering.
• The Safety Technologies project is inherently tied to engineering.
• Even the Socio-Humanities project integrates engineering, as reflected in its title.

These projects hold immense potential, which will only grow over time. While smaller projects will inevitably emerge—and should not be overlooked—TSU’s strategic projects are key to securing its status as a technological frontier university and one of Eurasia’s major scientific, technological, and innovation centers.

— What are the prospects for the four strategic projects as of today?

— The trajectory of these projects will depend not only on our ability to plan and execute but also on various external factors. The rapid shifts in external contexts often bring uncertainty regarding their impact on the university’s target model and its strategic projects. However, it’s crucial to view such changes as opportunities.

For example, when we first envisioned the Engineering Biology project and the advanced engineering school AgroBiotech, we couldn’t have imagined that we would acquire an experimental farm in Cherga, Altai Republic, spanning 68,000 hectares with 3,500 animals. Nor could we have foreseen the integration of the Tomsk Agricultural Institute into TSU.

These developments, while complicating TSU’s infrastructure and operations, have dramatically expanded the prospects of this project. By 2030, Cherga could become not only a unique experimental farm but also a major tech-innovation platform for cutting-edge developments in synthetic biology and agrobiotechnology. Additionally, it could serve as a natural “laboratory” for training future researchers in biodesign, molecular, and cellular engineering.

The integration of the Tomsk Agricultural Institute into TSU represents a breakthrough in reforming agricultural education in the Tomsk region and across the country. This collaboration, realized within the framework of the newly established Higher Engineering School of AgroBiotechnology, will elevate the prestige of agricultural professions and begin training the most highly qualified specialists in the field.

The program will deliver elite-level training for world-class professionals, as education will take place not only in university classrooms and laboratories but also within the natural ecosystem. The AgroBiotech Engineering School has already received its educational license for the bachelor’s program Technology for Processing and Production of Agricultural Products, developed based on the expertise of the Tomsk Agricultural Institute. Sibagro is a key partner in this endeavor.

This initiative will undoubtedly influence TSU’s educational and research policies. However, to achieve significant results in the Engineering Biology strategic project, the participants of the November project-analytical session identified several deficits that need to be addressed. These include dependence on imports, a lack of trust fr om the agricultural sector, and outdated educational standards in this area.

— Can we say that similar capacity-building processes, driven by changes in external and internal contexts, are happening in other strategic projects as well?

— Absolutely. The team analyzing these projects and refining their focus for 2030 highlighted the following: All of these projects have a strong foundation laid during the Project 5-100 era. However, much of today’s scientific knowledge quickly becomes outdated. One of the university’s primary ambitions—especially for its strategic projects—is to learn how to "unpack" this knowledge into new tasks and technologies, effectively converting accumulated fundamental knowledge into applied solutions.

Another ambition is to develop markets for its innovations and technologies and generate revenue. At the moment, the Safety Technologies project is the most successful in this regard, due to several objective factors. These include the rise of geopolitical, technological, military, and terrorist threats, increasing global social tensions, and emerging environmental challenges.

Thanks to this strategic project, TSU has the potential to become Russia’s leader in safety technologies by 2030, offering a wide range of developments and integrated technological packages. These include:

• Surveillance and control technologies.
• Additive manufacturing technologies.
• Materials with enhanced properties.
• Data analysis technologies.
• Navigation and robotics technologies.

These innovations are integrated into technological packages such as Smart and Safe Territory, Biosecurity, Drones, and Low-Carbon Energy and New Energy Sources.

However, the Safety Technologies project faces several challenges. These include the lack of management mechanisms for the ecosystem of engineering centers and the absence of supporting services. Essentially, TSU must learn to manage diverse production cycles, ranging from defense-oriented to agricultural processes. This is an extremely complex task that cannot be postponed.

The strategic Global Earth Changes: Climate, Ecology, Quality of Life project also holds immense potential. By 2030, it could position TSU as a leader in the market for assessing greenhouse gas balance and calculating carbon units, as well as a verification and certification center for greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related projects.

To clarify this complex topic, let me provide an example. Despite Russia’s pivot towards Eastern export markets, a significant portion of its high-carbon products—such as oil, gas, metals, and chemicals—will still reach European markets. Starting in 2026, Russia will be required to pay the EU’s Cross-Border Carbon Tax, an additional levy for exporting goods with a high carbon footprint. This tax will inevitably lead to significant costs for both Russian companies and the country as a whole.

To mitigate this, Russia needs to ensure that the tax is calculated based on objective indicators. This requires the development and implementation of domestic systems for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions and absorption, ensuring the comparability of data with international standards. These systems will also be crucial for designing and operating large infrastructure projects within the country, forecasting the consequences of climate changes, and guiding human intervention in natural ecosystems to calculate and minimize potential risks. In short, this is an extremely important undertaking.

In addition, the Global Earth Changes project focuses on creating comprehensive technological packages, not just individual technologies. Currently, there are three primary packages under development:

1. Technologies for long-term carbon storage in natural absorbers (such as wetlands), injection and storage of greenhouse gases in specialized geopolygons, and chemical capture of greenhouse gases.
2. Technologies for cleaning natural environments from organic pollutants.
3. Technologies for biological indication of the condition of natural objects.

It is also planned that participants in this project will contribute to the creation of a global climate model.

It’s worth noting that this ambitious project, covering the territory of the great Siberian rivers (approximately 70% of Russia), was initiated by forming a consortium. This consortium includes more than a dozen major institutional structures, such as several Russian universities and research institutes, along with the Main Geophysical Observatory.

The consortium's primary mission is to assess and forecast the carbon cycle. While the project boasts a strong research component, its implementation side is less developed. To succeed, it is crucial to engage more actively with potential clients for the project’s "product line."

One major challenge hindering progress is the inefficient funding mechanisms for interdepartmental and interdisciplinary projects. However, this issue is not unique to us—it’s a broader systemic challenge.

The strategic project often referred to as Socio-Humanities has significant potential for further development. Its overarching goal is revealed in its full title: Socio-Humanitarian Engineering: Research and Design of Humans and Society.

The main challenges it addresses include:

1. The blurring of boundaries between the biological and the technological.
2. The shifting frontiers of human-machine interaction amidst the digital transformation of all spheres of society.

Participants in the project initially operated under the premise that human and societal existence in a hybrid reality—an era shaped by two intelligences (human and artificial)—requires profound reflection. Their position is not only reflective but also predictive. A key focus of the project is the cognitive sovereignty of the nation, without which technological sovereignty is unattainable.

In 2022-2023, the project’s research focus shifted from the "augmented human" to the "holistic human," as the state clearly defined its goal of forming a cognitively strong nation capable of driving the country’s economic development.

Socio-Humanities has always functioned as a full-cycle interdisciplinary project, generating both fundamental and applied knowledge and technologies for transfer into education, policymaking, and business. Over three years since its launch at TSU, the following centers have been established and are now fully operational:

• Siberian Center for Artificial Intelligence (partner: SBER).
• Center for Cognitive Research and Neuroscience (partner: Neurotrend).
• Center for Reading Studies.

By 2035, the Center for Engineering Advanced Humanitarian Technologies is expected to become fully functional.

Within the Socio-Humanities framework, 18 tactical projects are being implemented, divided into three clusters:

1. Values.
2. Cognitive Enhancement.
3. Physicality.

All three clusters leverage new diagnostic and analytical systems and employ novel technologies for working with thought and consciousness. While it’s impossible to detail all of this in a single blog post, the subject warrants a dedicated discussion in the near future.

For now, I’ll briefly highlight some examples of products developed within these clusters:

• "Values" cluster:
• An interactive analytical dashboard Value Orientations of Russian Students.
• A platform for monitoring societal and political issues.
• A technology for identifying fundamental narratives of historical memory.
• A tool for forecasting trust levels in Telegram texts.
• "Cognitive" cluster:
• An accelerated development program for AI competency in educators, focused on generative artificial intelligence.
• A simulator for recognizing digital financial pyramids.
• A neural network service AI Evaluator.
• "Physicality" cluster:
• A technology for integrating digital elements into educational programs while accounting for their impact on physicality.
• A course titled Phygital Physical Education aimed at improving skills in both digital and real environments.

Challenges in the Socio-Humanities Project:
One of the significant difficulties lies in the ontology of socio-humanitarian thinking itself. Humanities researchers often face greater challenges than their counterparts in developing product-oriented thinking, as well as the skills needed to interact with real markets and identify clients or buyers for their intellectual products.

— It seems that personnel policy was also discussed during the strategy session on refining the university's 2030 target model.

— Yes, and it is probably one of the most sensitive topics. The goals we are setting today cannot be achieved without the right people. The group made their "bet": to create a human capital management system that generates breakthrough teams. The aim is to increase the share of those 20% of individuals who currently solve 80% of the tasks to 50% by 2030.

The group noted that breakthrough teams can take many forms but must share common traits: the ability to set new tasks and devise innovative solutions. They must exhibit entrepreneurial spirit and research-driven thinking.

The most pressing issue highlighted during the session was the misalignment between the current official distribution of positions and the new challenges facing the university. This is closely tied to another issue: the contradiction between the established professional-managerial academic culture and "product-oriented" thinking. Most staff members lack such thinking.

The session also noted the absence of a mastered model for cultivating technological entrepreneurs and a lack of shared language between the university and stakeholders. Furthermore, there is a communication gap between representatives of different schools, disciplines, and specialties, such as "humanities" versus "sciences."

Finally, a critical deficit is the lack of a sufficient number of young doctorate holders capable of leading "breakthrough" laboratories.

— What solutions were proposed for these personnel challenges?

In my speech during the "personnel" block of the strategy session, I urged participants to reflect on two questions:
Wh ere do we find the personnel we need, or how do we cultivate them?

It is indeed possible to train a Ph.D. faster than the usual 20–30 years. We’ve had such precedents here at TSU. However, when these young people, who had not gone through all stages of academic maturation, left the university, the faculties parted with them rather easily.

This shows that academic degrees alone are insufficient. A person must also possess values, ethics, interpersonal communication skills, and a sense of belonging. While these individuals often had impressive "technical specs" (such as being Presidential Award laureates or RAS medalists), their departure rarely evoked regret. No one missed them, and they were even wished well on their way. Today, many of them hold leading positions at top universities.

— What does TSU need in terms of ideal personnel?

It seems we have a dominant (ideal) anthropological type of TSU staff member in mind, but we still lack a concrete description. So far, this idea exists only as a feeling. Typically, such individuals are driven by curiosity and selfless dedication. Finding such people is crucial for us.

To operationalize this, we need to profile candidates. Using big data, we should evaluate at least two parameters:

1. High intellectual capacity.
2. Integrity.

Predictive abilities, such as the capacity to analyze future scenarios, are also important. And, of course, their values must align with ours.

— Should TSU prioritize "inbreeding" or "pure lines" in talent cultivation?

We’ve already answered this: pure lines. At the entry point, we recruit from diverse backgrounds, but from there, we nurture and develop them. It’s a long process, but we are consciously committed to it.

There must also be mechanisms for filtering out unsuitable candidates, especially among leaders. This is critical. Young people should be given opportunities to try their hand at management.

However, we’ve rejected the concept of a "personnel reserve." Why? Because entering such a reserve often fosters unrealistic ambitions. Graduates of such reserves frequently start demanding positions.

Our approach is different: go into project leadership and prove yourself. This is already happening in research schools, though it takes years, not months.

Finally, we must clearly position and communicate our values to new recruits right at the entry point. Those who share these values are welcome to join us.

—Which questions raised during the November strategy session did you personally find the most challenging?

— Challenging questions arose in every thematic block we discussed. However, perhaps the most complex—and even philosophical—question was how to reconcile service to the university with product-oriented thinking.

— And how did you reconcile it?

— So far, we’ve only answered the question of what service means. It’s when you primarily focus on working rather than earning. Indeed, if a university focuses solely on generating revenue, it risks undermining its core values. On the other hand, if it focuses only on values, it fails to address national priorities.

How do we achieve the right balance? That question remains open, but it’s something we constantly reflect on. Life itself sometimes hints at which direction to lean toward without falling into extremes.

Interestingly, our focus during the November session on a product-oriented and implementation-driven approach to developing TSU’s strategic projects turned out to be somewhat prophetic. At the time, we didn’t know but seemed to anticipate that the "Priority 2030" program would undergo restructuring. This topic was recently discussed during a meeting between the Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and university rectors participating in the program.

Now, instead of strategic projects, we are seeing the emergence of technological projects, driven by the need for Russia to achieve technological leadership in critical industrial and scientific fields as quickly as possible. Given this focus, it should be relatively straightforward for us to restructure our strategic projects and transition them into the technological project framework.

— What did the strategy session provide for you personally, as the university’s leader?

— It brought me to the definitive realization of the need for another balance when developing strategic projects: the balance between the university’s developmental logic and the national objectives set by the government at various stages of the country’s development.

We must learn to respond to these priorities swiftly—and ideally, anticipate them.

Eduard Galazhinskiy, Rector of Tomsk State University,
Member of the Presidential Council for Science and Education,
Vice President of the Russian Academy of Education,
Vice President of the Russian Union of Rectors

Interview and materials compiled by:
Irina Kuzheleva-Sagan