On July 1, Dmitry Chernyshenko, Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, paid a working visit to KNRTU. He is responsible for innovation activities in the government, supports research and development in the field of artificial intelligence, higher education and science, and handles the integrated development of the Volga Federal District.

The Deputy Prime Minister was accompanied by Andrey Omelchuk, Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, as well as representatives of regional authorities — Ilsur Khadiullin, Minister of Education and Science, and Azat Kadyrov, Minister of Youth Affairs.

This was Dmitry Chernyshenko's first in-person meeting with KNRTU. Therefore, the visit's extensive program included not only a meeting with the university administration, but also an introduction to scientific developments, student initiatives, and the progress of the admission campaign.

The visit began at the KNRTU Admissions Office. Despite the fact that more than 90% of applicants now submit for admission using the electronic service "Postupi v VUZ online", all eight educational institutions of KNRTU still form their admissions committees for face-to-face consultations with prospective students and their parents, as well as assistance in filling out applications through the super-service.

The traditional format remains in demand, as noted by Dmitry Chernyshenko, who not only observed the work of the admissions committees, but also met personally with one of the applicants, Artur Akhmetzyanov, a graduate of the Lyceum for Gifted Children with an Advanced Study of Chemistry at KNRTU, who was being advised by representatives of the admissions committee of the Institute of Oil, Chemistry, and Nanotechnology.

The guests and representatives of the university administration then proceeded to the meeting room of the Academic Council. As Rector Yuri Kazakov explained to Dmitry Chernyshenko, this room, which is decorated in a modern, technologically advanced style, has a rich history: it was the office of the great Russian chemist Academician Alexander Arbuzov and the laboratory of organic synthesis, where strategic defense-related work on the re-synthesis of sarin was carried out during the Great Patriotic War.

Andrey Omelchuk presented Dmitry Chernyshenko with a dashboard of the online super-service "Postupi v VUZ online": using this "dashboard," you can track the progress of application submission and processing in real time, both across Russia as a whole and in individual federal subjects, and see the dynamics of demand by specific universities and individual fields. The system also records the number of applications from foreign citizens, and as Andrey Omelchuk pointed out, KNRTU is the second-largest university in Tatarstan in terms of the number of international students.

Yuri Kazakov presented a report titled "Strategic Development Projects at the University," which focused on KNRTU's short-term strategic development plans. In a concise and informative manner, he presented the university's potential to his colleagues, discussing how industry-specific engineering personnel are trained in close collaboration with future employers, how the university's career guidance program for schoolchildren is organized (where we also collaborate with representatives of defense and petrochemical enterprises), and the contours of research activities aimed at achieving the university's key goal of becoming the first industry-specific university in the field of chemical technology.

As for specific areas of effort in implementing strategic development plans, Yuri Kazakov listed three of them: first of all, the renovation of the campus of the Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, which is a highly important task given the significance of training personnel and conducting research for the country's defense industry; then, the completion of the renovation of the educational buildings at the Nizhnekamsk branch of KNRTU, as well as the construction of a dormitory for its students, which are projects with a strong social focus due to the role that a modern university with promising educational programs plays in the development of small cities like Nizhnekamsk.

The implementation of these ideas is impossible without the involvement of the federal authorities. Dmitry Chernyshenko promised to carefully consider the proposed projects.

Then, the guests visited the Alley of KSTU Student Initiatives, an exhibition located on the second floor of Building A. Vladislav Dedkov, the commander of the KSTU Chemical Research Team, Daria Pupysheva, the commander of the KSTU Technologist Student Team, Sara Ismagilova, the head of the KSTU Tutors movement, and Sergey Ulchitsky, the head of the KSTU Student Scientific and Technological Society, shared their experiences.

The visit continued at the digital modeling laboratory of the Department of General Chemical Technology at KNRTU, where the Head of the Department, Professor Nikolai Ulitin, spoke about the work of the laboratory. The laboratory, he reminded, was established in 2023 as part of the Advanced Engineering Schools project and is designed to conduct research on reaction mechanisms and catalysis at the atomic and molecular level, which allows for the acquisition of valuable scientific data and the development of specific applications for enterprises interested in technological modeling of industrial processes. The department has a fleet of bench-mounted installations that can be configured for most industrial processes, as well as an extensive instrumentation and analytical base.

The department also conducts research on the creation of digital twins of industrial processes and develops artificial intelligence.

As Rector Yuri Kazakov noted in his official channel on Max, "D.N. Chernyshenko was interested in our university's potential as a participant in the ongoing large-scale program to develop new composite materials for the nuclear, transportation, and construction industries. This topic of composites is one of our most developed areas. KNRTU has everything it takes to expand research and introduce new materials."