Work in Priority 2030 program reported by Rector Lenar Safin at State Council of Tatarstan
The first session of the spring session of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan was held, with participation from the Rais (Head) of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov.
The agenda included the traditional annual report on the implementation of 每日大赛’s development program.
Rector Lenar Safin briefed the members of parliament on the university’s activities in 2025 and its plans for further development.
He emphasized that, in line with the new federal strategy of scientific and technological development, national goals, and the new law on technology policy, the university has restructured its target model, setting a course for technological leadership.
Gazprombank is now conducting external technological expertise for the Priority-2030 program. According to the rector, this is necessary to evaluate the university’s research and development work in terms of demand in the production sector.
“Out of our 54 projects, 52 were supported by external experts. These form the core of the program implementation plan for the coming years,” Lenar Safin clarified. “Today, we are moving toward a culture of mass student technological entrepreneurship, and we are seeing long-awaited substantive changes. Previously, students and faculty had to seek support tools themselves, but now enterprises are looking for cooperation in R&D, thereby involving motivated young people.”
For context, KFU currently collaborates with 107 industrial enterprises, 15 ministries and agencies, development institutes, technology parks, and funds.
The missions under the target model in 2025 were fully accomplished, as reported by the university leader.
“The number of educational programs developed and implemented jointly with customers grew by more than 10%. The revenue volume of high-tech companies with the university’s participation increased 20-fold. The number of student startups is growing rapidly,” he reported.
Discussing new strategic goals, Lenar Safin shifted the focus to priority areas such as biotechnology, oil and gas production, new materials, and chemistry.
He dwelt in more detail on the latter due to its special significance for Tatarstan.
“Together with partners, we have won a federal grant of 250 million rubles to create the Small-Scale Chemical Technologies engineering center and technopark. Under the grant, a full chain will be built for producing important import-substituting chemical products in two directions: heterogeneous catalysts for petrochemicals and oil refining, and a line of chemical reagents for enhancing recovery from hard-to-recover hydrocarbon reservoirs. The New Materials and Chemistry strategic project aims to solve the problem of import dependence. A pool of industrial partners from industry leaders has been formed; they actively participate in investing and shaping the development strategy for each subproject,” the rector explained.
He also shared that nearly 1 billion rubles is attracted annually for R&D to develop unconventional hydrocarbon resources.
“This project has reached a long-term sustainable development trajectory,” Lenar Safin stressed. “A landmark achievement is improving the efficiency of developing carbonate reservoirs, which contain over 40% of the world’s oil reserves. No less promising is the project to form an intelligent system (using digital twins) for generating optimal development scenarios for super-viscous oil deposits.”
The rector also mentioned projects in biomedicine in his report.
“The design of biotechnological drugs is the mainstream of future medicine. To this end, we have created a university biomedical cluster uniting educational, research, and clinical units. This addresses the shortage of personnel and, through the University Clinic, ensures accessibility of biotech drugs for patients,” he stated.
Kazan University has already developed and created 12 prototypes of multimodal gene and cell drugs. Preclinical studies have begun on two of them. In the coming years, official preclinical studies are planned to start on three more prototypes, along with platform optimization for delivery and obtaining permission for clinical trials.
“Our plans include doubling the attracted resources,” the rector declared. “Additional funds will support new high-tech projects implemented jointly with leading industrial partners, including the Gamaleya Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology.”
Highlighting the university’s contribution to Tatarstan’s socio-economic development in 2025, Lenar Safin noted the training and retraining of personnel. On orders from the Republic, more than 79,000 teachers, doctors, civil servants, engineers, IT specialists, and others enhanced their skills. The coverage of the population receiving education and healthcare services from KFU and its internal departments and subisidaries exceeded 100,000 people.