Russian Nanotechnology Corporation

Rusnano

Founded	Moscow, Russia (2007 (2007))
Headquarters	Moscow, Russia
Key people	Anatoly Chubais (Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO)
Number of employees	470 (2010)
Website	en.rusnano.com

Rusnano (Russian: Роснано) (formerly Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies) is a government-owned joint-stock company created as a Private Equity and Venture Capital Vehicle by the government of Russia and aimed at commercializing developments in nanotechnology. Rusnano's task is to create a Russian nano-industry whose products will be worth 900 billion rubles by 2015. In April 2012 they invested US$79 Million in Quantenna Communications, a manufacturer of semiconductors for wireless networks and devices. According to a press release issued by Rusnano, this investment will leverage synergies between Quantenna's portfolio and a number of nanotechnology initiatives that are under way at Rusnano.

The law which resulted in the creation of the "Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies" was proposed by several members of the United Russia party on June 2007. The proposal passed its first reading in the State Duma on June 14 and its final reading on July 4. The upper house and the Federation Council, approved it on July 6. Initially organized as a state corporation, the company was re-registered on March 11, 2011 as the open joint-stock company Rusnano.

In 2009, Rusnano established an international award in the “nano” field – the Rusnanoprize. The prize is awarded annually in one of the following fields: Optics and Electronics, Nanomaterials, Surface Modification, Medicine, Pharmacology, Biotechnologies, and Green Technologies. The prize fund is worth 3 million rubles.

On 7 September 2007 Vladimir Putin appointed Leonid Melamed, a former deputy CEO of RAO UES, the Director General of Rusnano. On September 22, 2008, President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Anatoly Chubais as the Director General of Rusnano. This same decree removed former Director General Leonid Melamed from his position. Despite this, Melamed is now the president of the European telecommunications giant Effortel and remains on the executive board of the company's Supervisory Council. In 2015, Melamed was temporarily placed on house arrest in an investigation into accusations of "wasting public money". Soon after the arrest, at least five high rank Rosnano managers left Russia.