Director of UNN Innovation Development Centre wins a grant from the Potanin Foundation

The Potanin Foundation has announced the results of the grant competition for faculty members of 75 universities participating in the Vladimir Potanin Scholarship Programme. A total of 150 initiatives aimed at redesigning and transforming educational products will receive support. The overall amount of grant support for the winners is 73.8 million rubles.

Alexander Knyazev, Director of the Innovation Development Centre of Lobachevsky University, was named one of the winners. He presented a methodological and didactic redesign of the course “Introduction to the Chemistry of Nanomaterials” for teaching master's students to develop and transfer socially significant technologies of “green” chemistry.

A total of 574 applications from 68 universities were received for this year's competition, and 526 applications were admitted for expert evaluation.

“The results of the grant competition confirm that universities are interested in updating their educational products. We can see the development of both individual courses and entire educational programmes, which are increasingly supplemented with networking and practical elements. We can particularly notice in the submitted applications the growing interest of educators in digital technologies: they develop digital twins, simulators, and gamification elements. Artificial intelligence is already involved in almost a third of the winning projects, not only as an object of study, but also as a teaching tool. We are confident that the implementation of the winning projects will help to train in-demand, competitive professionals,” said Oksana Oracheva, Director General of the Foundation.