President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov welcomed scientists in Kazan Kremlin on 9th February.

This year, 4 of the 33 laureates were KFU employees - Asya Aminova (Professor, Department of Relativity Theory and Gravity, Institute of Physics), Alexander Balakin (Professor, Department of Relativity Theory and Gravity, Institute of Physics), Yury Ignatyev (Professor, Chair of the Department of Higher Mathematics and Mathematical Modelling, Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics), and Sergey Sushkov (Chair of the Department of Relativity Theory and Gravity, Institute of Physics). Their prize topic is “Invariant-group methods in the theory of fundamental fields with applications to gravitation, astrophysics and cosmology”.

The team has worked on a non-minimal theory of interactions among gravitational, electromagnetic, scalar, gauge, vector, and axion fields and its applications in cosmology, astrophysics, and gravitational radiation. A number of theoretical inquiries have been made into structure and properties of relativistic objects and space substrates, such as black holes, worm holes, axion stars, magnetic monopolies, dark matter, and dark energy.

In the course of their longtime work, the laureates have presented 5 monographs, 12 reviews, and 250 selected scientific papers. A number of International Scientific Schools «Petrov Readings» (25 events) and «Gravitation and Cosmology» (10 events) have been organized.

Professor Ignatyev commented, “When we start understanding the processes of the Universe, we start understanding the deepest microstructure of matter. It was necessary to create such methods for nonlinear tasks in order to find out about the world we inhabit.”