In Akademgorodok, as elsewhere in Russia, science is having to undergo a revolution. Firstly, it has had to convert from mostly military to peaceful research. And secondly, it is having to switch from state to private funding and get used to foreign collaboration. For many, the Vektor Centre for Virology and Biotechnology, neat Akademgorodok, provides a model for the way forward. It is widely believed to have been a centre for the Soviet germ warfare programme, relying on defence spending for every rouble.
Officials insists it only worked on antidotes to biological attack from the West.
But in the past few years it has managed to switch to pharmaceuticals and has won orders for diagnostic tests for HIV and hepatitis. At the imposing Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Akademgorodok, director Alexander Skrinsky in following the same path. What this nuclear physicist and his colleagues must do in practice is change into entrepreneurs, linking up with companies in the US, Britain, Germany, Japan and elsewhere to do deals which will keep them in business. It's a daunting task. There's the language problem - the language of business after 70 years of Communism mindset.