Zhores Alfyorov, a Nobel laureate physicist and State Duma deputy, said Monday that he would head up scientific research at the planned Russian "Silicon Valley."
"I would have the opportunity to affect the development of the country and its scientific and technical potential at a time when global competition is growing, so I accepted the proposition," Alfyorov told Interfax.
Alfyorov will be the Russian chair of the innovative city's scientific council, and a foreigner will be appointed as his co-chair. He is currently in the process of selecting the co-chair, he said, without providing any names.
Alfyorov, 80, is the recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in physics for his research in semiconductors. He became a Duma deputy in 1995 as part of the the Our Home Is Russia party and was elected again in 1999 on the Communist Party ticket. He is a vice president at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where he also heads the nanotechnology department.
"I don't see anything strange in the fact that the country's leaders chose a prominent scientist. When it comes to making a breakthrough, he will be able to do so with clean, honest hands. … Even someone opposing the authorities can be called upon," said Ivan Melnikov, a deputy head of the Communist Party.
This is not the first center of innovation that Alfyorov has participated in. He headed the board of trustees of Sitronics, a subsidiary of Sistema that makes microelectronics in Zelenograd, a special economic zone that also has been called the "Russian Silicon Valley." The board ceased to exist once the company went public in 2007, a company spokesman said.
The proposed center of innovation, championed by President Dmitry Medvedev, will have its headquarters in Skolkovo and will be headed by Renova chief executive officer Viktor Vekselberg. Vladislav Surkov, Medvedev's first deputy chief of staff, told Vesti last month that "if two, three or four Nobel laureates don't live and work in the town, then we will not have reached our goal."