The results of the Potanin Foundation's grant competition for teachers in the 2025/2026 academic year have been announced. In total, 150 teachers from 58 universities participating in the Vladimir Potanin Scholarship Program were awarded this season, including five representatives of KNRTU.

The key goal of the competition is to stimulate the transformation of educational practices that foster professional competencies in demand on the job market. At the same time, a new opportunity has appeared for the winners: in addition to the grant, they will be able to receive additional support for their professional development, including participation in specialized events directly related to their projects. "This season, we are witnessing a significant shift in the approach to redesigning educational products," says Oksana Oracheva, General Director of the Potanin Foundation. "Teachers are increasingly striving to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge by creating "end-to-end" projects that allow students to see the full lifecycle of processes, from setting the task to defending the final solution. This approach to project-based learning is becoming the foundation for training specialists with interdisciplinary competencies. We see a demand for the combination of seemingly unrelated disciplines, such as philology and digital services, geology, and big data analysis. The integration of artificial intelligence is also reaching a new level, where it is not just about using technology but also about fostering a culture of interaction with it among students.

Among the winning teachers are KNRTU professors Sergey Garmonov (Department of Analytical Chemistry, Certification, and Quality Management), Nikolai Ulitin (Head of the Department of General Chemical Technology), Associate Professors Elena Balymova (Department of Industrial Biotechnology), Guzeliya Bikbulatova (Department of Chemical Technology for Processing Renewable Resources), and Gulnaz Fakhretdinova (Department of Professional Communication).

Professor Nikolai Ulitin and his colleagues are developing competencies in advanced automation as part of the master's program "Management of Energy- and Resource-Saving Processes" (under the "Scaling Technologies" program). “As part of the project, it is planned to revise parts of the discipline’s content in order to transition from master students studying basic control systems to mastering the principles of operation of intelligent control systems that can take into account the mutual influence of multiple parameters in real time,” said Nikolai Viktorovich. “This will allow them to master the tools for reducing specific energy consumption and minimizing raw material losses at complex technological facilities, which meets the requirements of leading enterprises in the oil and gas chemical complex.

The project of Professor Sergey Garmonov is a methodology for ensuring the quality of small- and medium-tonnage chemical products.

Elena Balyмова and her colleagues have developed a flexible training course "Instrumental and Analytical Production Control", which will allow biotechnology students to create their own individual educational trajectories depending on their career goals. The project team also includes Associate Professor Elena Perushkina and Zilya Khakimova, an environmental engineer at UkuLab LLC. The updated course is based on real-life cases from industrial partners (MUP Vodokanal, Nizhnekamskneftekhim PJSC, and UkuLab LLC), as well as modules on working with accredited laboratories. As a result of the course implementation, according to its creators, the university's ties with the real sector of the economy will be strengthened, the level of hard and digital skills of the master's students will increase, and a scalable learning model using a demo laboratory will be created. In addition, the project team plans to design adaptive, modular courses with the participation of external experts.

The project of Gulnaz Fakhretdinova, "Synergy of English and AI for Future Leaders of Chemical Technologies," is based on the integration of language training with artificial intelligence technologies. “Our master’s students will learn to formulate precise prompts in English for solving real research problems, from searching for chemical compounds to preparing publications,” said Gulnaz Nurkhametovna. “This will transform English from a subject into an interface for interacting with AI, and AI itself will become a tool for the professional activities of a research engineer. What motivated me to take on this project? We discussed with our colleagues, in particular, with the Acting Head of the Department of Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Artem Nikolaevich Bezrukov, the general trends in updating master's programs, especially the master's program in molecular engineering, and I decided to write an application for course redesign to revise the foreign language training program. The project will result in an educational model that can be scaled to other engineering master's programs.

Guzeliya Bikbulatova's project is also related to AI technologies. She will redesign the course "Technology of Processing Renewable Resources into Composite Materials and Bioplastics" to create competencies for the era of artificial intelligence.

This year, 1,302 people expressed interest in the competition, and a total of 513 applications were submitted, with 493 being approved for review. 150 teachers from 58 universities will receive support.