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Fifth Annual CNCP-NIS Conference: Building Commercial Partnerships, Batumi, Georgia, September 15-17, 2009
The Annual Conference where CNCP reviews its activities over the past year in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan was held in 2009 in Batumi, Georgia, between 15 and 17 October. A special feature of the Conference was its thematic focus - on support for commercial partnerships. This is a promising direction of the work of the Programme and one of its basic instruments for promoting the long term sustainability and self-sufficiency of CNCP supported commercial projects. More than 50 representatives of nuclear institutes from participating countries, British experts and the CNCP Management Team, gathered in a hotel on Georgia's Black Sea coast to review results, exchange opinions, and to hear about lessons learned through the work of the Programme. They also discussed the most effective ways in which CNCP's activities could be developed in the future. In his introductory address, the Georgian Deputy Minister for Education and Science, Nodar Surguladze, drew attention to the important role played by the Global Partnership and, for its part, CNCP, in this struggle by many countries of the World to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to combat terrorism and to reinforce nuclear security. The President's adviser on education and science, Alexander Gongadze gave the following assessment of the Programme: "We are all students of CNCP which teaches us how to commercialise scientific ideas and finances this activity. Business is still young in our countries and not ready to invest long term in science. Our businessmen need examples of how scientific ideas can be brought to the market place in practice". He described the most important features of CNCP as the objective and transparent manner in which decisions on financing are taken, educational activities, especially those involving opportunities to study good practice at first hand, and work which helps to build links between institutes and to create new partnerships. Alexander Tsibulya gave a statistical overview of the results of the Programme's activities, the key indicators being the number of jobs created, the number of projects undertaken and the scale of financing involved. One revealing statistic was that the total cost of projects being implemented in all the countries of the Former Soviet Union involved in the Programme, amounted to over $60 million - including both the contributions of the Programme itself and the various kinds of contributions by the project participants. The question of the future prospects for CNCP was raised in the presentation given by the Leader of the Programme, Patrick Gray. He argued that with proposals for grant funding for new projects being accepted up until the end of February 2010, the coming year could be expected to be the most difficult and the busiest in terms of workload, what with, on the one hand, many current projects coming to a close, and, on the other, a powerful stream of new projects. An important question taken up at the Conference was how best to employ the unique opportunities and experience which had been built up by CNCP through the previous five years of working together. Two basis objectives were set out for the last three years of the Programme: direct all resources available though these years to ensuring the creation of the maximum possible number of jobs, and; work to ensure that projects would be sustainable and self supporting after 2012. Within CNCP, two instruments were available to help create such sustainability - establishing partnership links and organising specialised structures within the institutes, which could stimulate and strengthen commercial and partnership activities. Each of these instruments was the subject of a separate Conference session. The question of other possible sources of funding for projects was also raised. One possible source could be the various state and national funds and CNCP was ready to support appropriate proposals from partner institutes, to work with them and to help obtain grants from such sources. The conference reviewed in detail all the four directions of CNCP's activities: grants; training (including study tours to Great Britain, which were recognised as being extremely useful, new forms of training in business English, and the creation of English language clubs within the institutes); organising partnerships; and support for the economic development of the institutes. The Programme had regularly organised seminars on the most promising areas of commercialisation activity. But the main focus of attention at the Conference was the issue of building commercial partnerships. This theme is seen to be of particular importance today and the CNC team will be actively working to develop and finance such activities right up until the end of the Programme. In the session chaired by the Director of the Tbilisi Institute of Physics, Geli Gelashvili, CNCP Coordinators from Almaty, Kharkov, and Tashkent presented projects being carried out by their nuclear centres. A particular feature of the Conference was that, along with discussion of current projects and new proposals, presentations also addressed the experience gained through projects which had already been successfully completed. Project leaders described their first experiences of commercial production, the problems they faced and their prospects on the market. A separate session was dedicated to the work of the Programme in Georgia and Armenia. These countries had only relatively recently become involved in CNCP activities but had made great efforts to develop collaborative work to commercialise scientific inventions and to launch and implement projects. The Directors of SIPT, Guram Bokucheva, and of Armatom, Vakram Petrosian, and the CNCP Coordinators in Tbilisi and Yerevan presented a broad range of information on their scientific and technological resources and the opportunities facing their institutes. They described possible high technology products, which had already been, or could be, put forward as the basis for CNCP projects. One of the biggest problems on the path to implementing such ideas was the absence of experience in organising commercial production and getting science-based inventions onto the open market. Other problems included a weak legal and regulatory system, administrative barriers, and issues relating to licensing and the protection of intellectual property. CNCP projects in Kurchatov (Kazakhstan) implemented through the National Nuclear Centre and the Park of Nuclear Technologies added up to one of the most high tech portfolios of activities, covering 17 projects in all. CNCP projects being implemented in nuclear institutes and laboratories in Kiev, Sevastopol, Minsk and Samarkand were also presented. A special session "Building Successful Commercial Partnerships", served as the core of the Conference. This involved a series of presentations dedicated to the successes achieved and the problems faced in establishing mutually beneficial collaborations, organised with CNCP support to develop production and raise the competitive potential of the institutes involved. Examples of collaboration included:
A Memorandum on Collaboration between the National Nuclear Centre KIPT (Kharkov, Ukraine) and the Park of Nuclear Technologies (Kurchatov, Kazakhstan) was formally signed during the Conference. Underlining the long term aim of CNCP activities to support the commercialisation of scientific inventions, the Conference organisers arranged a round table dedicated to Commercialisation Units. These are specialised structures, which are being established within the institutes with the support of CNCP especially to promote commercialisation. The Director of CNCP and Deputy Head of the DECC British Global Threat Reduction Programme, Trevor Hayward, stressed that preventing the dissemination of knowledge and experience relating to weapons of mass destruction, whether in the chemical, biological, or radiological and nuclear sphere, was the most difficult task in the field of non-proliferation. Closing the Conference, he underlined: "We will carry on working, we have something that that we can share, there is still a great deal that we need to achieve together. And I believe that this work will also continue to 2012 and for the rest of our lives".
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