Skolkovo Open University – a university open to the future.
SOU Mission — to develop students’ imagination and creativity, showing the diversity of current world views and types of thinking. World-leading researchers and practitioners allow the SOU to look beyond technological frontiers, helping it to ask the most important questions, to which there are no answers for the time being.
SOU is a part of the ecosystem of Skolkovo Innovation Centre. It is a source of prospective applicants (Masters and PhD) for the future Skolkovo University, a source of interns for Skolkovo partner companies, a source of projects for business incubators. SOU is not an educational institution, it does not award diplomas upon completion of education, nor is not tied to any particular location.
SOU is a series of lectures, master classes, and educational courses by leading thinkers, scientists and practitioners. It is a supported and moderated network of self-education, internship training and seasonal schools, including those at partner companies and in the world’s leading higher educational establishments.
SOU educational programme develops leading-edge knowledge in the priority research and development areas of Skolkovo (energetics, biomedicine, space, informational technologies, nuclear technologies), academic and innovative competencies (foresight, forecasting, thinking, projecting), entrepreneur competence, experience in team work on projecting and solving inter-disciplinary problems.
Skolkovo Open University started its work on April 21, 2011.
The first attendees of Skolkovo Open University were 105 students, graduate students and young scientists, picked out of 500 finalists from six partner higher educational institutions of Skolkovo in Moscow (HSE, MISIS, MIPT, MEPhI, MSU, MSTU).
Skolkovo will become a city-laboratory, where the innovations, developed in Skolkovo, will be introduced and approved. The Skolkovo Innovation City will be an energy efficient city, with low or zero emissions of harmful substances. Some of its buildings will even generate more energy than they consume.
At the moment, this principle is being realized with the creation of the power energy infrastructure of Skolkovo. The existing 500 kW and 220 kW overhead power transmission lines are being transferred to an underground cable. Plans also call for the construction of two underground 220/20 kW substations by the UES FGC Company, which is the first time that this is being done in Russia.