From the Barents Sea to the Sea of Japan in 8 minutes: the Russian Geographical Society presents a one-of-a-kind VR film. The film crew of the RGS was traveling around the country for three months, collecting the most beautiful shots. The result is the film "Russia. A Virtual Tour", created as a 360-degree video. The premiere screenings of the film took place in 2019 at the RGS festival in Moscow, which was attended by 500 thousand people, and the exhibition about its creation traveled to the several largest cities in Russia.

Come along on a trip through Russia, a country of culture with its rich history, breathtaking cities and stunning landscapes.Join on an expedition to explore the different cultures and people of the world's largest country.
by Ruptly

STS Forum in Moscow is hosted by Skoltech — graduate research institute established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT. Skoltech cultivates a new generation of researchers and entrepreneurs, promotes advanced scientific knowledge and fosters innovative technology to address critical issues facing Russia and the world. Skoltech applies the best Russian and international research and educational practices, with particular emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation.

Clement Fortin, Associate Provost, Dean of Faculty and Postdoctoral Affairs at Skoltech, spoke about breakthrough technologies in the aerospace industry and their impacts on society. He went from the Wright brothers' flight in 1903, an impressive feat of engineering based on solid science, to a global sky dotted by over 200 thousand flights at a single moment in June 2018 (that number was halved by COVID-19 this year). Fortin highlighted major areas of innovation in aviation, from autonomous systems, avionics and composite materials to air operation and product and system development. He emphasized the importance of knowledge exchange, pointing to the so-called vortical innovation model — a pathway to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 9 that shows how design and systems sciences, which are now at the core of Skoltech, facilitate product development. Accelerating innovation and increasing complexity, to Fortin, constitute a major challenge to the industry, and engineers will need new types of skills, as outlined by the World Economic Forum, to address this challenge.

Alessandro Golkar, Associate Professor and Technology Development Director at Skoltech, talked about the many ways in which space can have an impact on terrestrial activity and ultimately on society. The long and winding road led from the Space Race, an intense geopolitical competition between the Soviet Union and the US, to international collaboration, epitomized by the International Space Station. But now space is rapidly becoming a business, increasingly driven by interest from private companies, with the size of the global space economy estimated at over $344 billion. According to Golkar, space can be seen as a natural resource, and the exploitation of this resource, for example, in satellite navigation or connectivity from space, already affects the way we live in general. "Bringing space to non-space communities — this is where the big innovation is," Golkar says.

Kelvin Willoughby, Professor, Innovation and Intellectual Property, at the Skoltech Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, described ways in which technological innovation and international intellectual property management connects to national economic development. He led with innovation being at the heart of Skoltech mission, and the institute's distinctive approach to this matter. Willoughby then described the balance in international trade in IP-intensive products and services that Russia, as well as any other country, should strive for, and covered possible strategies in patenting that his research group at Skoltech has explored. He spoke about his research on outward-bound international patenting, the most progressive and promising strategy, and IPAD, the International Patent Application Density index that he developed.

Skoltech is the part of Skolkovo ecosystem. Skolkovo Innovation Center is founded in 2010. The number of Skolkovo residents has already reached nearly 2,600. In 2019, residents' revenue comprised over 100 billion rubles, and the amount of investment they raised amounted to 13 billion rubles. The Innovation Center infrastructure comprises, among other things, the research centers of industrial partners and the largest Technopark in Europe.

Treasures of the State Historical Museum: the largest collection on the history of Russia from ancient times to the end of the XIX century. 5 million exhibits and unique interiors in the Russian style.