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Newsletter:  May 2003/ Issue 4
Prominent Uzbek Scientist Visits Northwest

In January, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) hosted Dr. Bekhzad S. Yuldashev, President of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences and the Director General of the Institute for Nuclear Physics (INP) in Tashkent. Well known in the Eurasian academic world and among the progressive entrepreneurs of the region, Yuldashev has been leading the efforts of his Uzbek colleagues in building relationships with the US Department of Energy and national laboratories.

The occasion to host Yuldashev presented itself when, in response to an invitation by the University of Washington’s (UW) Russian, East-European and Central Asian Studies (REECAS) program, Yuldashev came to visit the Northwest. During his busy week in Seattle, Yuldashev gave a lecture at the UW’s Jackson School of International Studies; met with students at the UW’s Department of Near-Eastern Languages and Civilizations; gave presentations to a variety of UW scholars, administrative bodies and local dignitaries; and visited the Seattle-Tashkent Sister-City Association.

Yuldashev’s relationship with the UW goes back more than twenty years, having started when he came to the university as a Department of Physics Visiting Fellow in the early 1980s. With a career in particle and nuclear physics marked with successes that brought him to Russia’s highly prestigious Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Yuldashev’s prominent stature today includes membership in the Joint Institute’s Research Council; an active membership in the American Physics Society; and Fellowship in the Islamic Academy of Sciences, among numerous other credentials.

Yuldashev’s visit to PNNL while in the Northwest, which was initiated by the Battelle Seattle researchers Kristi Branch and Dr. Ghuzal Badamshina, was part of an ongoing dialogue between PNNL and the Uzbekistan Science and Technology community. A trip to the Tri-Cities was hosted by the PNNL Program Manager, Jennifer Tanner, who made it possible for Yuldashev to meet researchers and managers from a variety of PNNL programs and divisions.

“I found these meetings highly stimulating, this is exactly the kind of learning that will help us shape our approach to PNNL’s potential presence in the region’s science community,” Yuldashev emphasized.

In the context of a growing interest of the US government agencies to program-building in the independent states of Central Asia, such an evaluation bears a significant weight. It is particularly telling that the concept of regional security dominated as both a framework and a principal topic throughout the intense day of meetings in Richland.

The Laboratory’s Associate Director (National Security Division), Mike Kluse, showcased the capabilities PNNL is internationally known for, and highlighted some of the Lab’s programs that have been successful in the former Soviet Union, particularly in the nonproliferation domain. Yuldashev was briefed on the most recent projects that brought Uzbek groups to the Laboratory, which were related to emergency preparedness, like the US State Department “First Responders” program. While touring the Volpentest Hammer Training and Education Center, Yuldashev enthusiastically noted that an analogous facility in Uzbekistan could become a tremendous asset not only for the republic, but for regional training purposes as well. He also pointed out that a similar center built in Uzbekistan would help draw together professional forces from other republics to receive disaster response training, and a variety of scholarly staff, to design new, region-based curricula.

During his meeting with PNNL staff, Yuldashev provided participants with a detailed overview of the multidisciplinary capabilities amassed under the umbrellas of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Nuclear Physics (INP). The former has four divisions consisting of close to fifty scholarly institutions and R&D organizations, museums and libraries. The sets of capabilities span from medical and earth sciences, law and economics, archaeology and (Continued on page 14) ethnography, to mathematics and astronomy, material sciences, power engineering and advanced technologies.

The INP, a conglomerate of more than forty institutes and laboratory facilities, is broadly involved with international partnerships in the areas of optics, solar energy applications (the institute houses a 1 MWt solar furnace), semiconductors, instrument-making, et al. The researchers of INP, our guest proudly affirmed, have built an impressive number of joint programs with scientists at the US DOE-operated national laboratories—Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge.

The talks in Richland brought up an essential need for successful cooperation among the Central Asian republics as one of (Continued on next page) the main components of security stability in the region. Of particular interest to all was the idea of creating an initiative to bring together scientists working at Soviet-built nuclear research facilities. This idea is being pursued by Branch, Yuldashev, and Dr.Umar Salikhbaev, who spent three months at the PNNL Seattle office last year. The three have been forming a concept to cluster regional scientists into a cooperative network. The group could launch a council for research reactor facilities, or evolve into a comparable collective association.

Another potentially promising direction that emerged from the Richland discussions was a possible effort to expand the market for Uzbekistan radioisotope production. PNNL’s technology commercialization competence attained through programs in Ukraine and the Russian Federation under the Initiative for Proliferation Prevention could serve as an effective model for similar activities in Uzbekistan.

As stated by REECAS Director, Stephen Hanson, “In addition to everything accomplished by Professor Yuldashev, this visit has also highlighted, once again, the keen spirit of collaboration between the University of Washington and PNNL. Above all, joint efforts helped in devising a broader agenda for the Uzbek scholar’s time in the Northwest, even more so in the context of REECAS’ recent application for the US Department of State “Freedom Support” grant. That proposal incorporates a pronounced PNNL researchers component in the scholarly exchange program with Uzbekistan in the coming year.”

New opportunities are being explored in the PNNL/UW Uzbekistan-focused group. The UW’s Bio-Informatics and Health Economics experts are working with scholars Badamshina, Branch and policy experts at PNWCGS interested in non-traditional approaches to security threats. Whether helping to combat the region’s diverse problems—potable water shortages, environmental contamination, and porous border security—or, focusing on drug abuse, limited access to world-wide information, and a great need for comparative religion education, advances in these areas are perceived by the S&T leaders and government decision-makers like Professor Yuldashev, as critical to the Uzbek Republic’s developmental process.