Novosibirsk to Open Mechatronics and Automation Engineering Center
Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU NETI) is establishing an engineering center to connect university research with industrial production.
The new center will operate under Russia’s national project Means of Production and Automation. The Ministry of Science and Higher Education’s competition was highly selective: only 58 of 326 applications received funding. NSTU NETI was awarded 250 million rubles from the federal budget to establish the center. The facility is scheduled to open in 2027 at the university’s Faculty of Mechatronics and Automation. The faculty brings more than 60 years of experience training specialists in electromechanics, electric drives and automation.
Specialized Focus, Broad Reach
Mikhail Vilberger, dean of NSTU NETI’s Faculty of Mechatronics and Automation, outlined the goals for the new facility. The engineering center will develop, manufacture and service specialized equipment for research and testing at industrial enterprises. Its team will also design special-purpose electric machines and intelligent control systems.
For example, the center plans to produce and deploy a hardware and software system for automatically controlling the direct reduction of iron. The system is intended to replace imported automation technologies used in metallurgy. This project will also offer a practical look at the challenges of replacing foreign technologies and show how specialized industrial automation is developed.
The center’s partners and the industrial sites expected to use its latest technologies include Power Machines, ELSIB and ERASIB, along with other Russian companies. Dmitry Toporkov, head of the Department of Electromechanics and a Candidate of Technical Sciences, will lead the center.
Where Industry Experts Are Made
Russia is seeing more initiatives that connect universities with industrial production. In 2024, Innopolis University launched the country’s first federal center for industrial robotics development. Its director, Sergey Dallada, explained the mission: “The federal center for industrial robotics development was established to provide access to infrastructure and foster synergies among the expertise of developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, engineers, and manufacturers and users of robotics solutions. The goal is to encourage the deployment of robotics projects and advance the industry across Russia’s federal districts.”
In 2025, Russia launched the national project Means of Production and Automation. Valery Piven, director of the Department of Machine Tool Manufacturing and Heavy Engineering at Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade, described the project’s potential in terms of a specific target: “With this initiative and other government support measures, Russia’s industrial robot fleet could reach approximately 100,000 units by 2030. The adoption of robotic and automated systems will help increase labor productivity, reduce manufacturing defects and improve the overall efficiency of industrial processes.”
NSTU NETI has also established the Regionalnyy tsentr nauchno-tekhnologicheskogo razvitiya stankostroeniya Novosibirskoy oblasti (Regional Center for Scientific and Technological Development of Machine Tool Manufacturing in Novosibirsk Region). Denis Ryaguzov, the region’s acting minister of industry, called it a “qualitative leap” for local industry and emphasized that the new organization “addresses an urgent need among enterprises for expert support.” The new Mechatronics and Automation Engineering Center will build on that work: one center helps companies define their needs and identify available support, while the other designs and tests solutions and prepares them for deployment.
Compatibility as a Competitive Advantage
For Russian industry, an engineering center focused on industrial equipment and manufacturing processes could offer alternatives to foreign components and automation systems. Its potential scope is broad, spanning industrial software, automated control systems and embedded computing systems.
The industrial automation market is moving toward greater integration of equipment, software and data analytics. Competition is no longer just about supplying machine tools and robots; it is also about control over the platforms that connect them. Two factors will therefore be important in evaluating the Novosibirsk project: whether Russia achieves tangible growth in industrial robotics and whether the market moves from standalone components to complete, integrated solutions. In these systems, reliability and compatibility matter more than any single technical specification.
