MOSCOW, July 9. /TASS/. The International Scientific and Educational Center in Spitsbergen will be able to accommodate up to 100 scientists at the initial stage, the Arktikugol State Trust Company's CEO Ildar Neverov said.
"Given our current preparatory activities, we can easily accommodate up to 100 scientists," he said. "In case of an increased demand for our center, of course, we will be able to host more residents of the international scientific and educational center."
The center's infrastructure has been created and is being finalized now, he continued. "The infrastructure for this center exists already, it will be finalized by October, everything from catering for our resident scientists to their accommodation and logistics in the archipelago, which is very important," he explained.
A Russian scientific center on Spitsbergen, has been working in Barentsburg since 2014, he said. It features 14 scientific organizations. Scientists there are working in glaciology, meteorology, archaeology, geology and biology. The new international center will expand scientific directions. For example, foreign scientists have demonstrated interest in polar medicine and research in human health in high latitudes. "We can see that requests from foreign specialists, in particular Chinese ones, are mostly in polar medicine and high-tech solutions in human health," he said.
