Small Innovative Enterprises at SUSU: University Supports Venturous Inventors

On the last Saturday of June the Day of Inventor and Innovator is celebrated in Russia. This holiday, which this year is celebrated on the 30th of June, was introduced late in the 50s of the past century at the initiative of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and is celebrated every year, but was made official in 1979. South Ural State University actively supports students and graduates, who work on inventions. Thanks to SUSU 56 small innovative enterprises are currently functioning, which started being created at the university from the middle of 2010, when Federal Law No.217 was passed on creation of economic societies at universities for the purpose of implementation of the results of intellectual activity.

How Small Innovative Enterprises Are Being Created at SUSU

SUSU’s small innovative enterprises are companies, which were created thanks to the university by its enthusiastic graduates and employees. The university’s contribution may take different forms. First, the university provides people with knowledge and skills required for opening such companies. Second, the university transfers the rights for the objects of intellectual property to its affiliated enterprises including patents for inventions, utility models, design inventions, certificates on software programs, and so on. Third, SUSU has centers and research laboratories fitted with modern high-technology equipment available for the small innovative enterprises to use in their business processes.

“Small innovative enterprises would not have existed in the form they do now were it not for a lined up innovative ecosystem of the university. It comprises the SUSU schools and institutes training graduates for competencies being in demand in high-technology small companies of the university. The second key to this success is the support of the commercially oriented scientific and engineering developments of students, young researchers and university employees. We have a number of mechanisms of developing innovative ideas into active businesses, for instance, hundreds of our students and postgraduates take part in the contest procedures of UMNIK program of the Foundation on Innovations Facilitation every year, with 30 to 40 thereof receiving financing for fulfillment of their projects. Also we have created research-and-education centers and laboratories of world class, which render services and manufacture products for some small innovative enterprises of SUSU making the latter ones more competitive,” shares Deputy Head of the SUSU Department for Research and Innovations Evgeny Iogolevich.

Manu of the SUSU small innovative enterprises are working on innovations beneficial for human development, his health and quality of living.

Focus on Kids

Among the most well-known small innovative enterprises of SUSU is StandUp Innovations LLC (Innovations for Kids), a company producing interactive complexes for children’s development: sandboxes, climbing walls, Play and Progress mobile games blocks, and lessons for interactive whiteboards, which have no analogs anywhere in the world.

Sports and Health

The SUSU’s Institute of Sport, Tourism and Service created a small enterprise ISTIS-Med, which produces Fizio Step inner soles for correction of talipes, the use of which is beneficial for knee joints, relieves headaches and pain in the back. A patent was obtained for this invention and registered with the Russian Federation State Register of Utility Models. Using such inner soles track-and-field athletes significantly improve their results due to a different way of putting their foot and a changed angle of pushing off the surface.

Another university’s small innovative enterprise is working on an insulin pump — a device, which automatically administers medicines for diabetics, thus relieving them of the necessity to do injections several times a day on their own.

Moreover, SUSU scientists obtained a patent for a non-contact ECG monitoring T-shirt, which helps trace the health-status non-stop.

 

Unique Materials

An important field of the small innovative enterprises’ activity is production of new materials, the characteristics of which in many aspects exceed those of the materials currently in use. In particular, Stroitelstvo Research and Development Center LLC produces a unique quick-hardening concrete mixture, which allows to many-fold reduce the time of construction.

Azaliya Sharafutdinova, photo by: Oleg Igoshin
You are reporting a typo in the following text:
Simply click the "Send typo report" button to complete the report. You can also include a comment.