Dear colleagues, employees, and students!

I heartily congratulate the thousands of the staff on the university anniversary!

Our beloved university has matured for another year. It would seem that only yesterday we celebrated a significant anniversary date – 110 years ago the emperor gave his name to a new education institution.

We had a reason to once again recall how Saratov University had been established. For several decades, many representatives of the Russian intelligentsia lived hoping that a university would appear in Saratov – in one of the largest cities in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the informal capital of the Volga District. One of the first to talk about this was Nikolay Chernyshevsky. An outstanding politician Pyotr Stolypin played a huge role in the implementation of this plan.

If we trace the path from the last Emperor to the modern national research university, one of the leading in the Russian Federation, we can say that our university has always responded to the challenges of the time and to the requests of our region. Today SSU has created a powerful base for the intensive development of many research and education areas. We set interesting and challenging goals and we are ready for new achievements. So 2020 will remain in the history of the university not only due to the hardships that the pandemic has brought to all of us, but also to new promising projects.

An important task for the university was set by the speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin. Upon his initiative, we are creating a new faculty now – the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine and Medicine Technologies. The university will have a unique education structure, which will have to teach a modern generation of scientists demanded in medicine centres and laboratories.

In December, the Research Medicine Centre began to work, and its tasks are to conduct research in fundamental medicine and priority areas of the university research as well as to bridge science and applied problems solving. At the Academic Council, it was decided to establish the Institute of Physics, which will allow to unite and concentrate the achievements of the best research schools and give a new impetus to the development of physics and education at our university.

Surely there will be new ideas, projects, victories, and discoveries next year. And as before our wonderful students will glorify their region and alma mater with victories in state and region competitions.

I congratulate all employees, professors, students, and postgraduates on the anniversary of my university and thank everyone for their productive selfless work and studies!

Rector of the Saratov State University

Aleksei Chumachenko