Preparations for a reconnaissance marine expedition on the research vessel “Professor Gagarinsky”

A group of the POI FEB RAS staff members is currently completing training for a reconnaissance marine expedition aboard the research vessel “Professor Gagarinsky” in Vietnamese waters. The expedition is scheduled to begin in the second half of May 2026. The expedition will be carried out within the framework of the Scientific Research and Applied Work Program of the Joint Russian-Vietnamese Tropical Research and Technology Center (Tropical Center) for the period 2025–2029. The group leader responsible for the preparations is Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Lipinskaya, PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Senior Researcher at the Laboratory of Satellite Oceanology and Laser Sensing.

Earlier, on November 13, 2025, a working meeting of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science was held in Moscow to discuss the development of a marine research program for the Tropical Center using the research vessel “Professor Gagarinsky”. Deputy Director of the POI FEB RAS Yuri Pavlovich Vasilenko, PhD in Geosciences, who is overseeing this work, represented the meeting. The meeting discussed the possibility of integrating marine expedition projects submitted by six Russian scientific organizations. It was ultimately decided that the POI FEB RAS would be responsible for the expedition's oceanographic work, while the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences would be responsible for the biological and environmental work.

One of the main outcomes of the meeting was an agreement to joint conduction of a reconnaissance marine expedition on the research vessel “Professor Gagarinsky”. A program for this expedition was developed by the POI FEB RAS, the IEE RAS, the FRC IBS SS, and the IO RAS. Pavel Anatolyevich Salyuk, PhD in Physics and Mathematics, Head of the Satellite Oceanology and Laser Sensing Laboratory, and Yuri Pavlovich Vasilenko, PhD in Geosciences, Deputy Director, developed the program for the POI FEB RAS and coordinated it with other institutes.

According to the decision of the aforementioned meeting, after the reconnaissance marine expedition, the scientific organizations participating in it will adjust their projects for mutually beneficial cooperation among themselves and with the Vietnamese side, as well as for a more rational use of available resources. Among other things, the project of the POI FEB RAS will be modified. This will undoubtedly facilitate the institute's productive fulfillment of state assignments and will increase the number of its employees leading major Russian-Vietnamese scientific projects.

 
The research vessel “Professor Gagarinsky”