The Skolkovo Foundation has signed a cooperation agreement with BioCubaFarma, Cuba’s biggest biotech company, continuing a series of agreements and mutual visits between the foundation and the island nation.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, right, receives a copy of Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart's book from the author at the IASP conference on Tuesday. Photo: Sk.ru.
The latest agreement, signed at the International Association of Science Parks and Areas of Innovation (IASP) conference in Moscow on Tuesday, lays out a concrete mechanism for enabling Skolkovo and BioCubaFarma, which makes hi-tech medicines and equipment, to maximize their research and development and efficiently commercialise the results.
“This agreement with Skolkovo will allow us to create a platform for intensive cooperation in biotech,” Dr. Eduardo Martínez Díaz, first vice president of BioCubaFarma, told Sk.ru.
The aim is to give a more structured framework to the longstanding cooperation between Skolkovo and Cuba, said Kirill Kaem, head of Skolkovo’s biomed cluster, who signed the agreement together with Martínez.
“Now we have agreed with Dr. Martínez that we will have two specific “one-stop” channels of contact,” said Kaem. “The first channel will be the people who will work in the BioCubaFarma research centre that will be set up at Skolkovo under the agreement,” he said. “The second will be a specific person at BioCubaFarma itself who will oversee all aspects of cooperation with Skolkovo.”
Biotech is Cuba’s second biggest export after nickel, and BioCubaFarma exports to nearly 50 countries. Cuban delegations are regular visitors to the Skolkovo innovation centre, and in February this year, a Skolkovo delegation headed by the foundation’s president Victor Vekselberg visited Havana, where several memorandums were signed.
Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart, the eldest son of Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro, presented the Russian version of his book, “Science for Innovation: the Cuban Experience” at the IASP conference on Tuesday. At the presentation ceremony, Vekselberg described Castro Diaz-Balart as a “good friend” of the foundation and was the first to receive a signed copy of the book.
Castro junior studied and worked as a nuclear physicist in the Soviet Union for several years in the late ’60s and ’70s under the pseudonym of Jose Raul Fernandez. He is now a vice president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, and a science advisor to Cuba’s Council of State.
During his time in the Soviet Union, only a few people in the entire country knew his true identity, Castro Diaz-Balart told Sk.ru in a recent interview.