perjantai 4. maaliskuuta 2011

FRIU: what you could find in this word?

I started to work for LUT and NORDI since last year, August and already during the first month I understood that I have found the place where there is very interesting and at the same time very challenging work. I would say that I started to respect all Finnish people which try to work with Russian market, study it, negotiate with Russian people, managing common projects. It’s possible to read about Russia, participate courses about this market and absolutely another thing is to work in this field, “building the bridge between EU and Russia, Finland and Russia” and I’m very proud that LUT and NORDI has the most important role in this!
Currently we have and support one of such projects as FRIU (Finnish-Russian Innovation University). You could ask what is the role of such university, why we try to develop this and what is the future of this network? Like you have already understood, this is the innovation university which combines technologies, business and design as the main areas of expertise. Also, this is the network or alliance between Finnish and Russian universities which creates opportunities for most effective and productive work in common research projects, educational and training programs. This is very young university with 3 years of history but already with some results such as common applications for several funding programs, training programs in the field of innovations for Russian groups, seminars and conferences.
During this spring we are planning to organize FRIU conference as pre-conference to EU-Russia Innovation Forum. This would be good opportunity for FRIU network to attract more highly respected participants of forum which could give us their recommendations and advices for further development of this alliance!
If you go to NORDI’s website you can find that currently FRIU includes only 6 universities from Russian side (from St. Petersburg) and 3 universities from Finland. But this network “Innovation University” started to be famous and popular in Russia and more and more universities would like to be the part of it. What is the interest for them from such membership? This is not the secret for the whole world that Finnish education is the best now internationally and Russian education has many reforms and changes nowadays. The opportunity to get advice from Finnish universities, participate in short-term training programs in Finland, create common master programs in the special field are just the minimum for FRIU participants!
If you permit me to dream a little bit, I would say to you that FRIU could in one day include Russian universities from different parts of this country (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ural area, Siberia, etc.), majority of Finnish universities and such alliance will be open minded and creative with new innovative ideas not only in the field of education, but also in business, technologies and of course, design!
And NORDI is trying to do all the best in order my dreams come true!;))
With very warm wishes,
Katja
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Katja Novikova is working as a reasearch director at Nordi.