Sustainable development goals at MIPT
Goal 1. No poverty
Students in need are granted monthly financial aid by the Association of Student Unions as well as aid per semester from the Phystech School administration.
A targeted program was developed to provide affordable meals at reduced prices to students that need them.
Students actively participate in charitable events to support orphanages and underprivileged families.
Goal 2. Zero hunger
One of the primary missions of MIPT’s Laboratory for the Development of Innovative Drugs and Agricultural Biotechnology is to conduct research into new agricultural technologies. The lab team works to introduce methods for decomposing mycotoxins, which pose a serious threat to all types of livestock. The lab also looks for new plant growth regulators by employing their predeveloped model systems of green algae and tobacco pollen and with the help of the ImageXpress Micro XL automated screening system.
The team’s current research also encompasses the validation of the biological activity and the investigation of the mechanism of action of new promising modulators of crop growth in vivo throughout the plant life cycle — in collaboration with Professor Klaus Palme from the University of Freiburg, Germany.
Goal 3. Good health and well-being
Employees and students undergo annual health checkups. Throughout the year, students and staff receive medical services free of charge at the university’s health clinic fitted with state-of-the-art equipment.
The MIPT Health Care Center offers treatment options and preventive care for boosting immunity, increasing adaptability, enhancing the body’s functional reserves, and increasing the working efficiency of students and staff. The Institute’s medical professionals come up with a customized set of procedures for each student.
MIPT promotes a healthy lifestyle. A swimming pool, a sports hall, several gyms, and a stadium are available throughout the year, with a hockey rink set up in the winter. The access to the sports facilities is free of charge to students and employees. Among the sporting and well-being events held regularly is the Match of the Century, a traditional 24-hour game of soccer, which brings together the university’s students, professors, and alumni. Another 24-hour event is the Swim of the Century, where teams of students and graduates compete against each other. The Institute also holds ski races, as well as volleyball, chess, darts, basketball, and track and field tournaments.
In 2019, MIPT established the Laboratory for the Analysis of Public Health Indicators and Health Care Digitization.
Goal 4. Quality education
With its 7,000 students and over 80 members and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, MIPT has the highest academician-to-student ratio for a Russian university.
MIPT is one of the top 100 universities internationally in terms of the student-to-faculty ratio, as indicated by the Times Higher Education rankings. This has a positive effect on the overall quality of education, facilitates interaction, and contributes to a more favorable learning environment. A high number of teaching staff means students receive more individual attention and personal feedback. It also frees up more time for in-depth discussions on pressing issues.
MIPT is the No. 45 best university worldwide for physics according to Times Higher Education, and it has remained among the 50 top universities in that subject ranking for the third year running. In 2019, THE featured MIPT at No. 95 on its list of top 100 universities to study computer science. And besides naming MIPT among the 100 best institutions globally based on the learning environment, the Times Higher Education rankings also indicate that the industrial cooperation and income from innovation activity for the real economy remain the Institute’s strong points. The active development of science at MIPT is reflected in its positive performance dynamics based on the research metrics employed by the rankings. You can out more from the dedicated page on ranking results.
The Distance Learning School of Physics and Technology at MIPT has an annual 18,000 school students from grades 8 through 11, who either attend additional classes in physics, math, chemistry, computer science and information technology, or take courses remotely. The distance learning school has about 1,000 interest groups. Over the 52 years of its operation, more than 100,000 students have graduated from the school, with 16,000 of them becoming MIPT students. Those include the 2010 Nobel laureate Kostya Novoselov.
The Institute pays considerable attention to the academic competitions recognized by the Russian School Student Olympiads Council. MIPT co-organizes nine annual olympiads listed in the council’s register. Over 60,000 students from some 80 regions of Russia take part in these competitions. The contest stages that involve student participation in person are set up in many cities across Russia as well as in the neighboring countries. This aids talent recognition.
MIPT regularly hosts lectures and talks delivered by world-famous scientists. These events are free and open to the public.
A set of events that are part of the Institute’s Phystech System of education allow MIPT to effectively spot talented students and enable their professional self-identification and growth as researchers and engineers with breakthrough potential.
Goal 5. Gender equality
The number of young women admitted to MIPT and building a career at the Institute is growing every year. Over the past five years, the number of female students has grown by more than a third.
MIPT respects the norms and provisions of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation. This includes the prohibition of labor discrimination.
The Russian Constitution provides that men and women have equal rights and freedoms and equal opportunities at MIPT.
Goal 6. Clean water and sanitation
MIPT’s Laboratory of Functional Organic and Hybrid Materials works to create innovative polyelectrolyte-based materials, which will underlie the construction of self-powered multimedia filters for seawater desalination, sewage treatment, and the extraction of rare earth elements.
Joined by the All-Russian Society of Nature Conservation, MIPT is building a device that will connect to your smartphone and allow you to test the quality of water, which could be done in a classroom. Students will only need to bring water samples from home and let the technology do the rest. After a sample is analyzed, all the data, including where the sample was collected, will be sent to a unified database system. This will give us an opportunity to create an interactive nationwide map of tap water quality.
Goal 7. Affordable and clean energy
Over the past five years, four new buildings were built on the MIPT campus, respecting the modern environmental and power efficiency standards.
MIPT’s new boiler station is more efficient than the old one and emits less CO2 per kilowatt-hour produced. Apart from that, it provides heat to off-campus city buildings.
An international team of scientists featuring employees of the MIPT Laboratory of Functional Organic and Hybrid Materials showed that ordered structures based on organic molecules can become the basis of solar panels. The scientists came up with a way of using such structures to boost the efficiency of organic solar cells several times.
Goal 8. Decent work and economic growth
MIPT operates on a set of principles known as the Phystech System. One of them is the immersion of learners in research at one of the numerous partner organizations, where prominent scientists supervise student projects. There are over 100 such organizations, including many research institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences and some of the country’s major tech companies.
MIPT placed first among Russian technical universities in terms of the salary potential of its IT graduates, according to the rankings published by Superjob. The students gain hands-on experiences as early as the third year by getting internships at some of the top Russian companies. Within three to six months after graduation, 95% of MIPT alumni secure employment.
Goal 9. Industry, innovation, and infrastructure
MIPT is building the ecosystem of a world-class innovative research and development center. The university offers a perfect environment for unlocking student and employee potential and fostering personal growth. The 96 hectares of the university’s campus accommodate 12 modern dormitories with a total area of 93,000 square meters, nine educational and research buildings, and a sports center.
Since 2018, MIPT has established the Phystech.Start business accelerator with the support of the MIPT Endowment Fund. The residents benefit from mentorship, education and progress tracking programs. They receive knowledge and guidance on project development from successful entrepreneurs — themselves MIPT graduates — and experts from tech companies. Apart from that, the program’s residents gain access to a coworking area.
The MIPT Engineering Center is an innovative facility for engineering, science, and technology. It offers a wide range of services in the field of natural resource recovery and processing. The center actively develops its own technological solutions and takes them to the market. It makes full use of MIPT’s human resource potential, as well as employing scientists and engineers from other leading research centers of Russia.
Goal 10. Reduced inequalities
MIPT is committed to improving the quality of the degree programs offered by higher-education institutions outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. The goal is to make sure that they meet the standards set by the leading universities in the nation’s two largest cities. This will help address the skilled labor shortage that high-tech companies face throughout the country.
Founded in 1966, MIPT’s Distance Learning School of Physics and Technology serves to improve the general level of science education in Russia. It creates a free educational environment for eighth- to 11th-grade students who are interested in physics, math, chemistry, and informatics. Learners from all over the country receive assignments and other materials prepared by the leading MIPT professors. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kostya Novoselov was among the graduates of the distance learning school.
MIPT actively collaborates with more than 1,100 high school teachers, helping them engage advanced students by setting up study groups and face-to-face elective courses that follow the Distance Learning School curriculum.
MIPT annually hosts more than 100 events targeting school and university students, as well as school teachers. These include the Start to Science, academic competitions held at locations across the nation, the Roboton MiR contest, lectures for schoolers participating in olympiads and applying to university degree programs, and the all-Russian test in physics and technology Get It Solved, to mention a few. More than 250,000 school students and university students, teachers, and professors from Russia and abroad take part in these events.
International applicants have the opportunity to receive a tuition discount or waiver. There is a government quota for foreign student; alternatively, they may qualify for federal financial aid covering their tuition costs. Applicants who do not speak Russian can get enrolled in a preparatory program that features courses in Russian and the STEM subjects.
MIPT students come from 51 countries. Over the past few years, we have welcomed our first students from Albania, Yemen, Israel, Mexico, Poland, and Indonesia. MIPT currently offers three bachelor’s and eight master’s degree programs taught in English.
In Russia, the state guarantees the equality of human and civil rights and freedoms for every individual regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, language, property and official status, place of residence, religious or other beliefs, membership in public organizations, and other circumstances. Any form of restriction of citizen rights on the grounds of social, racial, national, linguistic, or religious affiliation is illegal.
Goal 11. Sustainable cities and communities
MIPT is one of the largest employers in the town of Dolgoprudny. MIPT is not only a higher education institution but also a national research institute. MIPT pays a special attention to teaching schoolchildren. In particular, rigorous programs have been developed for pupils of the Kapitsa Phystech Lyceum and Physical and Mathematical Lyceum No. 5, Dolgoprudny. The students receive advanced technical training that is geared toward the MIPT curriculum, and have a chance to eventually be admitted as undergrads. The Institute employs many of its graduates, who also find high-tech jobs related to their degrees.
Apart from that, a lot of top-level young specialists come to Dolgoprudny to work at MIPT and bring their families with them. The chance to receive a fundamental physical and mathematical education at the best technical university in Russia is one of the factors that make MIPT an attractive employer.
The territory of the MIPT campus, complete with a stadium and a swimming pool, is available to local residents. The campus offers convenient parking spaces and pedestrian areas. Six bike racks and two bicycle storage rooms for students and employees have been built over the past five years.
Goal 12. Responsible consumption and production
The Energy Storage Systems Lab was established in 2017 as part of the Research and Technology Center for Autonomous Energy of the Institute of Arctic Technology, MIPT. The lab is developing lithium-ion-based energy storage systems that would withstand the harsh Arctic conditions to provide autonomous energy in the region.
The laboratory also conducts R&D to meet the international standards for lithium-ion batteries and eventually begin their series production in cooperation with industry partners involved at every technological step, from the development of modern materials to the creation of an end product in the form of an energy storage device or an electric vehicle.
The Engineering Center for Natural Resource Recovery specializes in the development of technological and software solutions to enhance the efficiency of oil and gas extraction. Another focus of the center is on hard-to-recover natural resources.
Goal 13. Climate action
A team of scientists led by MIPT and MSU professor and RAS member Igor Mokhov, who is the scientific director of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), assessed the contribution of Russia’s anthropogenic and natural CO2 and CH4 emissions to global climate change in the 21st century.
In 2019, the MIPT Laboratory for Geophysical Research of the Arctic Region and Continental Margins of the World Ocean organized two major Arctic expeditions that involved exploring tectonically active areas in certain regions of the Arctic shelf, particularly in the Laptev and East Siberian seas, where areas of unusually intensive methane emissions into the ocean and atmosphere were discovered. Monitoring the emission of methane is important for estimating its role in the Arctic climate change.
Goal 14: Life below water
Following four expeditions in the Arctic Ocean and satellite data analysis, a group of Russian climate scientists featuring MIPT researchers described the ocean’s so-called seasonal memory. That mechanism explains how air circulation in the region has caused the ice in the Eurasian Arctic to melt quicker than that in the North American Arctic in the 21st century.
Goal 15. Life on land
A team of MIPT researchers partnered up with their colleagues from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Water and Environmental Problems of the Siberian Branch of the RAS to suggest a new method for measuring the depth of soil thawing based on satellite microwave radiometry data.
MIPT researchers created a new ranking scale that ties the concentration of free radicals in lichens to air pollution levels. This makes it possible to identify areas with substandard air quality harmful for humans, without the need to directly measure atmospheric composition.
Goal 16. Peace, justice, and strong institutions
There is a trade union committee operating at MIPT, which welcomes both employees and students of undergraduate and graduate degree programs to become its members. The committee’s main aim is to represent and protect the professional, occupational, economic, and social rights and interests of its members.
MIPT follows the norms and regulations set out in the Russian Labor Code, including those prohibiting employment discrimination. No individual shall be constrained in their labor rights and freedoms or gain any advantages based on sex, race, skin color, ethnicity, language, origin, age, place of residence, religion or belief, membership or nonmembership in public associations, social groups, etc., or because of any other circumstances unrelated to their professional qualities.
Goal 17. Partnerships for the goals
MIPT partners with over 40 leading research and scientific institutions, including those that are part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as dozens of scientific industrial enterprises and major tech companies to actively develop innovative projects. As a result of implementing the Institute’s development program, the research potential grew significantly. Over 80 laboratories were established for research in fields such as 2D materials, quantum technologies, biophysics and genome technologies, Arctic development, artificial intelligence, and aerospace technology.