Swiss Delegation Headed by Deputy Ambassador Visited UrFU

21:13, October 13, 2020

'Swiss researchers and business express great interest in working with Urals'- Deputy Ambassador Privitelli

Minister and Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Switzerland to the Russian Federation Tobias Privitelli met with UrFU rector Victor Koksharov to discuss the development of cooperation between Ural Fderal University and higher education institutions and research centers in Switzerland and gave a lecture to a limited number of students.

The head of the University recalled that since 2017, the Center for Global Urbanism has been operating at the Ural Institute of Humanities of UrFU, which is jointly managed by Professor of the University of Lausanne Martin Muller and Professor of UrFU Elena Trubina.

“The focus of researchers is the upcoming FISU Summer World University Games-2021 that will be held in Yekaterinburg,” added Director of UrFU Institute of Humanities Elvira Symaniuk. - Without exaggeration, the Universiade will change the face of the city. In addition, we are interested in research with Swiss colleagues in the field of federalism and confederalism, issues of sustainable development and heterochronous retirement for different professional groups, as well as other areas of study in history, psychology and international relations."

In addition, scientific cooperation with Switzerland has been established at the level of departments. Thus, for more than 10 years, the Department of Condensed Matter Physics has been fruitfully cooperating with the Laboratory of Neutron Scattering of the Paul Scherrer Institute. The Ural Center for Collective Use "Modern Nanotechnologies" under the leadership of Professor Vladimir Shur has close ties with scientific organizations in Lausanne, for many years it has been cooperating with the Ceramics laboratory, Institute of Materials, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - EPFL. Associate Professor of the Department of Turbines and Engines Leonid Plotnikov cooperates with specialists from ABB Turbo Systems (Baden).

A scientific group led by the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics and Applied Mathematics Vladimir Mazurenko from the Russian side and Professor of the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (Lausanne) Frederic Mila conducts joint research on "Modeling of low-dimensional quantum systems." One of the results of the work in 2020 is the development of a new quantum state that can be used to build quantum devices. For joint trips next year, scientists received a Research Preparation Grants 2020 with Russia grant from the University of Geneva.

After the meeting with UrFU rector, Tobias Privitelli met with students of the University and told them about the political system of Switzerland and answered the students' numerous questions.

“Switzerland has four basic principles of government. The first one is the striving of parties and factions for political stability in the fact that all the main political forces are represented in parliament, in the government. Of course, the principles of separation of powers and subsidiarity are also important. This means that the federation is only concerned with the competencies that have been transferred to it by the cantons. No party, no group, no canton has everything under control. The nature of Swiss politics is the principle of consensus: one must always come to an agreement with everyone, the diplomat says. - We have a very high level of identification of citizens by the Swiss state. Every citizen can speak at popular assemblies in villages, influence the country's policy at the municipal level. He can also put forward an initiative for a general vote. To do this, you need to collect the required number of signatures - 50-100 thousand. "