A new Faculty of Fundamental Medicine and Medical Technologies will start working in Saratov State University in 2021.  Chairman of the State Duma of Russia, the first chair of the SSU Board of Trustees Vyacheslav Volodin initiated to establish this faculty. He shared the idea to open the faculty and defined its role in the development of education and science in Saratov Region in his speech at the event celebrating the 110^th anniversary of the university on December 20, 2019.

In April this year, according to the Order of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science, Saratov University received the licence to teach students in three courses: 30.05.02 –  medical biophysics, 30.05.03 – medical cybernetics, and 30.05.01 – medical biochemistry. For two of them the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russia, in accordance with Order No. 848 of July 31, 2020, allocated state-funded places for SSU. For the 2021/2022 academic year 25 state-funded places are provided for the medical biophysics and medical cybernetics courses.

To open the new faculty, the staff of various university faculties and research structures had to solve many problems.

For half a year the university has been thoroughly preparing to open of the faculty. Using federal state educational standards, curricula have been designed, syllabi have been developed, the plans on personnel and equipment have been drawn to ensure the work of a new education unit. Now the university is solving the tasks related to the academic affairs there.

It was decided to open a new faculty at the university not only because the region needs qualified specialists engaged in innovation research in fundamental medicine; in connection with that, simultaneously with the faculty, it is planned to create a research medical centre in SSU. It is also important that for many years conducting research in fundamental medicine has been one of the priority areas of the university. To note, that during the past year, research papers on fundamental medicine accounted for 12% of the total number of research papers made by SSU scientists. 11% is the number of research grants on this topic in the total amount of research grants received by the university. And 40% is the total amount of grant funding on the above topics in the total amount of grant funding for university research groups.

Today, there are world-class research laboratories at the university which are associated with fundamental research in medical science and finding the solution of important applied innovation problems for "high" medicine. The laboratories were established within the Government Megagrant Programme won by the university for conducting research headed by leading scientists: the Biomedical Photoacoustics Laboratory and the Remote Controlled Theranostic Systems Lab. In 2019, SSU became the winner of the megagrant contest with the project titled the Discovery of Fundamental Sleeping Mechanisms for Breakthrough Technologies in Neurorehabilitation Medicine. Its goal is to create another world-class laboratory – a laboratory of "smart sleep" to study the phenomenon of cleansing brain tissue from toxins during sleep and the development of special portable smart devices to control these processes for breakthrough solutions in neuroregenerative medicine. There is also the Clinical Decision Support System Laboratory at the university opened due to the grant from the Foundation for Advanced Research Projects. Integrating various medical studies in a unified medical centre SSU will continue to carry out fundamental research in medicine and solve important applied innovative problems for "high" medicine.