By Lisa Carlin

The Skolkovo Foundation, the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SkTech, pronounced, “ess-kay tek”), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have launched a three-year collaboration  to develop a new graduate research university.

The new institution aims to bring together Russian, US and global research and technology — and in integrating teaching, research, innovation and entrepreneurship. Education and research at SkTech will be organized around multidisciplinary technological challenges, rather than traditional academic disciplines. The new institution will focus on energy science and technology, biomedical science and technology, information science and technology, space science and technology, and nuclear science and technology.

A defining component of SkTech will be its Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI), which will integrate education, research and practice in entrepreneurship and innovation, as applied to the research results of the SkTech research centers. MIT will assist in creating the CEI organization and education program.

Recently, the Skolkovo Foundation announced the nomination of Edward Crawley, MIT’s Ford Professor of Engineering, as SkTech’s first President.  The Skolkovo Foundation is a Russian nonprofit organization founded in 2010. SkTech will enroll its first full inaugural class in 2014, and when scaled to planned capacity, will have 1,200 master’s and doctoral students, 300 postdoctoral scholars and 200 faculty.

(Lisa Carlin is consulting editor with techtaffy.com. She can be reached at [email protected])