Yesterday Nicholay Merkushkin at a meeting with the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation Dmitry Livanov expressed gratitude for the support of the Samara State Aerospace University (SSAU), in particular, for “road map” approval of the university development until 2020. The main objective of this work is to make the Samara University one of top-100 universities in the world. At the meeting it was noted that together they will have a lot of work to do for the “road map” implementation of SSAU development. It was agreed that joint efforts of the SSAU staff and other universities of Samara Region, Regional Government and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation should make everything necessary to achieve the purpose in view.

Nicholay Merkushkin discussed development of aerospace cluster with the Head of the Federal Space Agency Oleg Ostapenko. The meeting was planned in advance and was held at the airport by arrangement: Oleg Ostapenko returned to Moscow after a working visit to Samara, and the governor was going to Samara Region upon the President's message. The Parties discussed the issues of development of the Central Assembly and Design Engineering Bureau “Progress” and creation of new types of rocket vehicles on the basis of the enterprise. The issues of participation in the modernization of ROSCOSMOS in modernization of the Open Joint-Stock Company “Kuznetsov” were considered. Participation of ROSCOSMOS in development of the SSAU and training specialists for all ROSCOSMOS structures on the base of Samara University was also discussed at the meeting.