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Sargsyan: work in cabin, dream of Technopark

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Neither earthquake nor uneasy "domic" conditions could stop the researches

Sargsyan, 71, is director of Gyumri’s special experimental technological institute, which since the 1988 Spitak earthquake has been located in two “domiks,” or small temporary shelters, heated by a wood stove.

While the earthquake damaged the original building and some of its equipment, the collapse of the Soviet Union cost it its glory and its main customer.

“Our specialty is already in our blood and even during these difficult years we didn’t plunder or sell the property belonging to the institute,” says Sargsyan, who has 50 years of experience as a designer of seismic equipment. “Instead, we tried to survive by continuing to implement our ideas.”

Only a few similar scientific and technological facilities remained in Gyumri after the earthquake. These, Sargsyan says, have been struggling to survive “with a hope for tomorrow.”

That day may come within a couple of years under a government-backed plan to build a technology and research facility, or “technopark,” in the city.

The project, approved earlier this month, aims to rebuild the city’s former production and technological potential as well as provide jobs for highly skilled specialists in the Shirak region.

“The program of the establishment of a technopark in Gyumri is important from several aspects–such as the social aspect, employment, use of local scientific potential, as well as in terms of developing small and medium-sized enterprises,” Armen Gevorgyan, Armenia’s deputy minister of Trade and Economic Development, told ArmeniaNow.

It would become Armenia’s second such facility after Yerevan’s ViaSpher Technopark, which was set up six years ago and today incorporates 12 companies under its roof working in such fields as microelectronics, vacuum technologies, and natural energy.

Unlike the Yerevan technopark, which was established largely due to the efforts of American and European companies, the Armenian government is at the vanguard of the Gyumri project.

“Establishing a technopark is an expensive pleasure. However, for this purpose the government is ready to assist as far as possible both financially and organizationally,” Deputy Minister Gevorgyan said, urging local authorities and scientists to make an active contribution to the program.

There were 38 factories and scientific institutes in Gyumri before 1988, producing machines, tools, furniture, construction materials and food. These accounted for 7 percent of Soviet Armenia’s production and employed 21,000 people.

Today, according to the official statistics, 48 small factories operating in Gyumri employ 780 people.

Plans call for transforming the old Soviet-era company, Analitiksark 1, into the new technopark. Analitiksark 1 still produces specialized devices used in shipping and submarines.

The technopark will be funded through the government-owned New Investments Company, which provides venture capital to new firms, as well as private sources. The initial phase of the technopark will cost $200,000, with future costs still being worked out.

According to New Investments Company deputy director and program manager Gagik Karapetyan, the technopark will act as a business innovation center for the purpose of developing small and medium-sized enterprises that will provide specialized equipment, as well as offer information, expertise and other services to small companies.

Investors in the project expect the technopark will be ready in 2008, the 20th anniversary of the earthquake that killed at least 25,000 people in the Shirak region. They hope it will mark the beginning of the revival of science in Gyumri.

That would be good news for Robert Sargsyan’s technology institute, which at its peak employed 130 people. During the Soviet era, it was second only to a similar facility in Moscow for design and production of seismic devices. Its reputation was burnished not only on its seismographs, but production of submarine detection devices.

Today, it designs seismic monitoring systems for nuclear power stations and water reservoirs in Armenia and abroad.

Showing a number of devices created jointly with his colleagues, Sargsyan said: “Gyumri has a scientific potential not for writing articles but for turning out production. If the technopark is created it will be an amazing thing. We still have a lot of ideas that have not got off the drawing board yet and which will ensure competitive production.”