Thoughts on Science Development in Kazakhstan

A short post about my current activities in Abu Dhabi was recently published. Some thoughts remained outside the published text, due to the need to write the material briefly and apparently without criticism :)

During this short interview, I was asked: how is science developing in Kazakhstan today? Perhaps the thought I would still like to share is: science requires large expenditures, and science does not return these expenditures immediately, it's an investment for decades ahead.

At the moment, it is difficult to develop science in Kazakhstan because everyone expects that once you invest in science - there should be an immediate result. In fact, the only university where research is conducted on a large scale at the proper level in our country is subjected to endless criticism (but on the other hand, when a university's budget is comparable to the budget of a small city - the indignation of the population can also be understood).

Kazakhstan is good at using and implementing ready-made technologies in applied areas, from which you can get some output here and now. And this is generally not bad, at the moment it is enough. But this is not science. I think we are a little confused about these two concepts of 'science' and 'technology'. Science requires large investments and guarantees little in return.