EMC announced it plans to establish a research and development (R&D) center in the Skolkovo Foundation’s Innovation Hub in Russia. The Innovation Hub will focus on the development of cloud infrastructure solutions and big data analytics technologies for bioinformatics and energy efficiency.

In addition, EMC plans to collaborate on research projects in these and other areas with Russian universities, government agencies, and local and multinational companies in the Skolkovo community.

The new EMC R&D center will be located at the Skolkovo Innovation Center and will work in cooperation with EMC’s existing R&D center in St. Petersburg.

The Skolkovo Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on establishing an innovation hub to stimulate innovative entrepreneurship that will benefit Russia and the global economy. Skolkovo’s goal is to leverage Russia’s resources in the field of contemporary applied research and create a favorable environment for undertaking scientific developments in five priority areas of technological development: power engineering and energy efficiency, space, bioinformatics, nuclear and computer technologies.

In Skolkovo, EMC plans to initially focus on developing cloud infrastructure and big data analytics solutions for:

Bioinformatics -- Cloud computing and big data analytics technologies that will enable the study of larger quantities of biological data, at a higher precision and in shorter periods of time, to accelerate advancements in personalized medicine. These technologies are expected to be applied to molecular medicine, pharmaceuticals, biomedicine, and industrial biotechnologies.

Energy efficiency -- Big data analytics tools that will provide actionable intelligence from the massive amount of new smart metering and smart grid data to benefit energy-generating infrastructures in Russia and the rest of the world.

Skolkovo cloud infrastructure: EMC expects to be a technology provider for the Skolkovo community’s cloud infrastructure, supporting organizations that generate massive amounts of data.

EMC’s Skolkovo center will be part of its global network of R&D centers operating in China, India, Singapore, Ireland, Israel, Brazil and the US. Each center is focused on innovative research and development of EMC offerings such as cloud, big data, security, virtualization, information management, and information governance.

Viktor Vekselberg, president of Skolkovo Foundation, said, “As a global leader in enabling its customers to store, manage, protect and analyze data, EMC is uniquely qualified to help the Skolkovo community achieve maximum effectiveness by working with their most valuable asset: information.”

The Skolkovo Foundation for new technologies development and commercialization is a non-profit organization, founded by the initiative of the Russian Federation president Dmitry Medvedev in September 2010.

Skolkovo Foundation’s project plan includes the foundation of the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skolkovotech), research institutes, business incubator, technologies development and commercialization centers and R&D centers, residence building and social infrastructure, and following distribution an effective regulations for other Russian innovation regions. Innovation center “Skolkovo” activity is regulated by law which provides special economic conditions for its residents.