The Dynasty Foundation Year by Year

2002

• The Foundation launches its first program, which provides grants and stipends to university students and young physicists.

2003

• The Foundation establishes a support program for graduate students and young scientists working toward their first advanced degree.
• The Dynasty Foundation joins the Russian Donors Forum, which brings together such major foreign and Russian foundations as the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Potanin Foundation, the Open Russia Foundation, and CAF.

2004

• The Foundation conducts its first Russia-wide competition for math and physics teachers. The one hundred best teachers receive awards.
• In August, the Foundation's first science summer school is a great success. The school's lecturers and students include Foundation grant winners and the laureates of its teacher competition.
• There are more than ten applicants for each opening in our competition for young scientists.
• Our Moscow Time project begins to assemble a collection of photographs of the Russian capital from the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
• In cooperation with the Eurasia Foundation and the Severstal Group, the Foundation launches the three-year project The Road Home, which finds foster families for orphaned and neglected children.

2005

• The Foundation launches its Popular Science program and Elements, a popular science website.
• Leading scientists from the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences deliver a series of public lectures on physics. The lectures are a huge success with the public.
• The Foundation establishes a long-term program to support conferences and seminars on theoretical physics.
• The Foundation begins a joint project with the Institute for Mathematical Science, Imperial College, London. Young Russian scholars compete for one-year postdoctoral positions in geometry, string theory, and related disciplines.
• The Foundation makes the decision to support the creation of the Geron Lab, a new microbiology lab headed by the US-based Russian scientist Yevgeny Nudler.
• The Dynasty Foundation heads the board of the Donors Forum, an association of major Russian and foreign philanthropic organizations.

2006

• The Dynasty Foundation Library imprint makes its debut with the Russian-language publication of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Almost Everything. The book, which became a Russian best seller, had been recognized as the best popular science book of 2004.
• The Foundation announces a new grant competition—Science Museums of the Twenty-First Century. The goal of the program is to develop Russia's science museums and to help them create interactive science education exhibitions for children and adults.
• We launch the program Science Days: Regional Popular Science Festivals.
• In addition to its current programs, the Foundation announces a support program for talented mathematicians.

2007

• An independent Board of Directors is appointed to oversee the Dynasty Foundation.
• The Dynasty Foundation now has more than twenty programs for the support, development, and popularization of science, education, and civic education.
• The Foundation launches a training program for future scientists. The program helps upper-year high school students and university physics students pursue research careers.
• The Foundation begins to support “science cafes”—meetings between scientists and popular science journalists.

2008

• Enlightenment Prize for non-fiction literature is established.
• Short-term visit program for foreign scientists is launched.
• Scientific Experts Corps is organized with assistance from the Dynasty Foundation.

2009

• The project “Science Without Borders” was started. Leading world scientists will give open public lectures accessible through internet in any part of Russia.
• The teacher support program was extended: from 2010, in addition to physics and mathematics teachers, chemistry and biology teachers can also participate in the program.
• The humanitarian and the natural sciences categories were established in the framework of the Enlightenment Prize.

2010

• A support program for young physicists' participation in short-term thematic international programs was started.
• The support programs for teachers was expanded: starting in 2010, chemistry and biology teachers also participate in addition to the physics and mathematics teachers.
• In the framework of working with schoolchildren, the first educational project competition was conducted.
• On the Elementy website, a Videotech section was created where videos of public lectures of leading scientists and science popularizers, of popular science lectures for schoolchildren, and of master classes for teachers organized under the auspices of the Dynasty Foundation are freely accessible.
• A series of scientific round tables with Russian and French scientists participating was conducted in partnership with the French Embassy in Russia.
• Eleven popular science books were published with support from the Dynasty Foundation.
• More than 15,000 books from the Dynasty Foundation Library were donated to Russian libraries, colleges, schools, and also to the winners of the Dynasty Foundation competitions.
• For the first time, a Science Days Festival was organized especially for children—at the Russian Children Center “Orlyonok.”

2011

• A new grant competition was opened in the framework of the support program for conferences on mathematics.
  Eight conferences were supported in 2011.
• A grant competition for young biologists specializing in molecular and cellular biology was opened.
  For the first competition 87 applications were submitted.
• The first laboratory training for biology teachers “Modern Experimental Biology at School” was organized.
  This project is part of the Dynasty Foundation support program for teachers.
• A Russian-British Science Cafe in Saint Petersburg was conducted together with the British Embassy and the General Consul of Great Britain in Saint Petersburg for the first time.
• Nikolay Andreev, the author of the joint project with the Dynasty Foundation “Interesting Mathematics,” and Dmitry Gorbunov, a young physicist laureate of the Dynasty Foundation, were awarded the 2010 Prize of the President of the Russian Federation.
• The second international popular science festival ScienceArtFest was held by the Dynasty Foundation.
  It lasted 25 days and was visited by over 15,000 people.
• Dmitry Zimin awarded Academician Sergey Kapitza, a famous science popularizer and the permanent host of the TV show The Obvious and the Incredible, with a special award for his contribution in education.
• Ten public lectures of leading world scientists were conducted in Moscow under the auspices of the Dynasty Foundation.
• The Dynasty Foundation for the first time held its own summer school for school children with courses in various subjects from physics, chemistry, and biology to art history and linguistics. The school was conducted in the framework of the Science Days Festival in Orlyonok.
• The Dynasty Foundation has supported a demographic research center at the New Economic School. Vladimir Shkolnikov is heading this center.