Ruben Vardanyan talks creating an innovation campus in FAST’s ecosystem

Social investor Ruben Vardanyan has told about the activities of Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology – FAST. Vardanyan is one of the FAST co-founders.

“Apart from the Global Innovation Forum, which FAST organized in Armenia, we managed to do several interesting projects. Some of them worked, and some did not. It is hard to be a catalyst of development, consolidate joint efforts, and coordinate all these process.

The main point is that we have successfully formed a team that does the job in a systematic and consistent way. We have attracted most distinguished scientists from all over the world. It was not easy to integrate these people, working in different countries and having different mentalities, but it is a significant advantage,” Vardanyan said in the interview to RUSBASE.

“We wanted to create an innovation campus in the framework of FAST, which we would include not only a university, although it is the anchor element in the general FAST ecosystem. Creation of such a campus is a huge project with a large number of participants. In these initiatives, it is very important to consolidate efforts in order to create one good university, not five bad ones.

We strive to create an environment where scientists from all over the world can open laboratories and interact. Unfortunately, current situation in Armenia has slowed down the implementation of this project. Nevertheless, it is a key project for us,” stated Ruben Vardanyan.