A state campaign for the return of 15,000 scientists from abroad will be launched in Russia
It is an interview with Artyom Oganov included in the Forbes top ten most influential Russian scientists. In 2015, Oganov returned to Russia from America and currently heads a lab in three countries: the US, Russia and China.
AO.: Data on the ‘brain drain’ are very different. They speak about from 80,000 to 800,000 people who have left since the beginning of the perestroika. To me, the most reliable estimate seems about 100,000-200,000 people
In the last few years, interesting opportunities for work began to appear in the country; about 1,300 scientists have come back. But taking the scale of Russia, a more powerful influx is needed, so that the ratio between the number of emigrants and the returnees would reduce from one hundred times to at least ten times. Hence, 15,000 are needed. We do not want everyone to return, but only the most promising and successful. 15,000 such people will be able to provide a sharp jerk of the Russian science and technology”
Q.: In what countries do they live now? In what areas of science are they busy?
AO.: Most of them live in the US, many in Germany, the UK, fewer in Italy, Japan, Spain, Canada, and Australia. The outflow has affected all spheres, including specialists in the humanitarian science.
Yelena Dobrukha
Moskovsky Komsomolets, N106, 24.05.2016, pp. 1, 6