Посол - Выступления

President of Skolkovo Foundation, Dr. Vekselberg,

President of Skoltech, Professor Crawley,

Distinguished Guests and Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to congratulate all of you today on the opening of the Startup Village 2015. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Vekselberg for giving me this opportunity.

I remember my first visit to Skolkovo a few years ago. It was a green field ground with a few buildings just built or still under construction. To be frank and honest, beyond my expectations based on the impression at that time, since then Skolkovo has not only greatly changed its outward appearance but also its efforts to build a world-class innovation hub have been making remarkable progress. I pay high tribute to Skolkovo’s active work on the expansion of the international innovation network, when innovation has become an extremely important common challenge of the global community and requires close international cooperation.

Now let me touch upon briefly cooperation between Japan and Skolkovo. In this context, first of all I would like to appreciate the efforts of Dr. Vekselberg and all Skolkovo persons concerned to strengthen cooperation with Japanese companies and Universities.

As a result of those efforts, major Japanese companies or organization such as Panasonic, Shimadzu Corporation, and the Japan-Russia Medical Exchange Foundation have already signed cooperation agreements with Skolkovo. Other Japanese companies are also currently considering initiating cooperation with Skolkovo.

In addition, from the viewpoint of development of innovative human resources, several Japanese Universities and Skoltech started consultations to promote cooperation. I hope the consultations will soon result in the start of student exchanges and other concrete cooperation.

Finally, I would like to express my best wishes for the success of Startup Village 2015 and for the development of cooperation between Japan and Skolkovo.

Thank you for your attention.