A week of chemistry in Russia

Rosalind Onions and Stuart Govan, Royal Society of Chemistry

In the last few years, our activities have expanded all over the world. With eight international offices, more than 20 staff in China and six in India, our international presence is stronger than ever before. It is our aim to support the chemical sciences all across the world, including those countries whose chemical science community displays strong growth and potential.

Our activities in three of the four ‘BRIC’ countries – Brazil, India and China – now range from scientific conferences to support for teachers. The fourth country is Russia, which itself has a long scientific history. After years of underfunding, stagnation and the ‘brain drain’ of the 1990s, Russia has big ambitions to get back on the scientific grid, and has prioritised chemistry as one of the nine key fields that are crucial to its national interest.

Russia has a strong entrepreneurial and innovative culture that focuses on commercialising research, and the government has provided large amounts of funding for universities and is encouraging scientists to share their work and collaborate internationally. We recognised this as an opportunity to become a leading partner in shaping future developments across Russia’s chemistry community, and began building relationships with universities, companies and the public sector. Back in November last year, Robert Parker attended a signing ceremony between UK and Russian ministers to mark the beginning of the UK-Russian Bilateral Year of Culture and the Russia-Europe Year of Science in 2014. Following on from this, we organised an entire week of chemistry-related activities that took place in Moscow between 20 and 27 October.

A focus on science innovation

Russia Chemistry Week was our first event in Russia with the aim to support innovation, understanding and collaboration in chemistry between the UK and Russia. It featured four specific strands looking at themes with specific appeal to Russian audiences: industry, publishing, cheminformatics and education.
We covered the first three themes as part of the Chemistry+ exhibition in Moscow. Through our exhibition stand, we informed chemical scientists of the work we do and engaged them with our activities. In addition, we held a range of different discussion sessions, open forums and presentations to bring together academics, industrialists and others working in the chemical sciences.

Our opening event focussed on industry in Russia, providing a forum for us to explore the role we can play in supporting innovation in Russia, by supporting SMEs, research groups and multinationals alike. The event was opened by Professor David Phillips, former RSC president; Professor Natalia Tarasova, incoming president of IUPAC; Barbara Habberjam, Minister Counsellor at the British Embassy Moscow; and Alan Thompson, Director of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce. Key industry representatives highlighted both the opportunities and challenges of encouraging innovation and technology transfer in Russia, and representatives from SMEs and universities shared experiences of industry-academia collaboration.

Opening speaker Tatiana Schofield from Synergy Lab said about the day: “The innovation in industry forum provided a great opportunity to showcase best practices in innovation. This event has made a great contribution towards unlocking synergy potentials between universities, industry and the public sector.”

Her feelings were echoed by Kendrick White of Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod who explained that it “was a terrific opportunity to meet world-class chemistry experts, share experience and make new contacts.”

Helping chemists share knowledge

The second day focused on supporting Russian scientists in promoting and sharing their knowledge. It offered us a chance to showcase the depth and breadth of our publishing activities, but also provided a platform to discuss the changing publishing landscape in Russia and the UK, with a focus on Open Access.

Chaired by the University of Nottingham’s Professor Martyn Poliakoff, the event enabled attendees to find out about editorial and data publishing from one of our Executive Editors, Serin Dabb, and our Chief Technology Officer Valery Tkachenko. Representatives from NEICON, the Russian publishing consortium, and Moscow State University, added further details on publishing from a Russian perspective.

The Royal Society of Chemistry and UK chemists have had scientific relations with Russia for more than 100 years, as evidenced by a 19th century certificate sent to the Mendeleev Chemistry Society by what was then the Chemical Society to honour the achievements of Alexander Butlerov.

Stressing the long history and the importance of scientific diplomacy between Russia and the rest of the world, Martyn Poliakoff said that “at a time of political difficulties one should maintain scientific links. There are numerous acute problems in the world – famine, clean water, food security … and scientists can solve those when they are working together.”

Serin Dabb also emphasised that the current political situation does not influence our editorial policy as a fair and ethical publisher. Whilst we currently publish relatively few papers from Russian authors, this is due to a low number of submissions, which, in turn, is most likely the result of our journals not yet being very visible in Russia.

Finally, the sessions on cheminformatics on the third day highlighted advanced work in mining research data and the role that Russian scientists have played in these developments. In addition to hearing from Valery Tkachenko about some of our activities in the cheminformatics field, participants also had the opportunity to share best practice and explore potential new collaborations.

Connecting people with chemistry

The final part of the chemistry week was a two-day programme of lectures and workshops at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art to showcase the connection between chemistry and art. Working together with the museum, we were able to translate several of the activities we run in the UK in order to share with the Russian public the importance of chemistry in our everyday lives.

Students were able to explore hands-on chemistry through activities based on those we showcased at the Big Bang Fair earlier this year, and the general public heard about how chemistry and art connect through a public lecture by National Gallery scientist David Peggie. In addition, our Spectroscopy in a Suitcase coordinator Claire Doyle held a spectroscopy masterclass focused on pigments and blueprinting.

What’s next?

Through the week-long programme aimed at audiences ranging from scientists to the general public, we were able to share with people in Russia some of our activities. We were also able to form new connections with the community, which we are looking to build on in the future. Our plans to expand our activities in Russia will begin with us supporting a British Council Researcher Links workshop on molecular materials in February 2015.