VI CNCP-NIS Annual Conference - "CNCP 2012: from grants to new opportunities", Minsk, Belarus, September 2010

The General Director of the Joint Institute of Power and Nuclear Research, Vyacheslav Kuvshinov, opened the Conference on behalf of the host organisation: «We view the activities of the CNCP Programme, whose basic aim is to reduce the risk of the proliferation of nuclear weapons and to collaborate over technology commercialisation, with the greatest respect. These objectives are extremely important for us. CNCP has introduced us to modern approaches to the task of turning scientific innovations into marketable high technology products».

Participants were welcomed by the Deputy Ambassador of Great Britain in Belarus, Jim Couzens, the Director of CNCP in the Department of the Energy and Climate Change, Steven Laws, and the Managing Director of HTSPE, Chris Lockett. «Your work is helping to make the World a safer place», stated Jim Couzens.

A special feature of this conference was discussion of the next stage of the CNCP Programme, when grant finance for new large commercial projects is no longer available, but all the other forms of support remain. Opportunities are opening up for new initiatives, aiming in the first instance to underpin the sustainability of jobs and business resulting from projects which have been completed or will be completed in future.

Leaders of the partner institutes discussed each of the CNCP instruments: funding for commercialisation projects, training, promotion of partnering, and support for economic development and entrepreneurship, and related these to particular projects being implemented in their institutes. They emphasised two important aspects of the work of the Programme. First, the project management system established through the efforts of all those involved in the Programme. In fact, this is the Western system, localised and adapted to the conditions of the countries of the Former Soviet Union. The system concerned is transparent and, judging by the results, pretty effective. It is currently supporting about 150 projects in seven countries with total funding of over £ 37 million. Second, the Programme has succeeded in creating an environment where specialists from different countries of the Former Soviet Union can communicate among themselves. Through these innovations, the Programme has created an environment where problems relating to commercialisation and technology transfer can be approached in new ways.

The Programme is unique, both as concerns its fundamental aim – to create jobs – and as concerns the approach it has adopted. Many donor funded programmes operate on the fish breeding principle – scattering a huge number if eggs in the ocean in the hope that some will survive and develop into adults. CNCP is more like a mammal, which nurtures its offspring as they develop through to self-sufficiency.

Guests from Russia, the Rosatom «Closed Nuclear Cities Partnership» Programmes Coordinator, Vladimir Sterekhov, and the Director of the Seversk Business Development Agency, Alexander Krupin, elaborated on CNCP experience in their country. Noteworthy presentations were also given by the Director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of Kazakhstan, Adil Tuleushev, and the Deputy General Director of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, Vladimir Chizhov. Their Institutes, among the first to join the CNCP Programme, have pursued the commercialisation of their scientific innovations actively and tenaciously and have achieved considerable success in this regard.

Other sessions were led by the participating countries and took up particular themes, for example: «dialogue with customers in industry and medicine», «characteristics of the market for radiation treatment», and others. A special session was dedicated to CNCP experience in the creation of innovation business support infrastructure in Russia.