Alexander Fedorets: University of Tyumen sets scientific trends and creates know-hows

Alexander Fedorets is a Doctor of Science (Engineering) and Head of the Microhydrodynamic Technologies Laboratory of University of Tyumen. Alexander Fedorets is celebrating a big date – 15 years ago, on April 25, 2004, Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters has published his fundamental scientific discovery on the phenomenon of a "Droplet Cluster". Over the past years, this finding has gained a lot of traction, primarily due to the research done by the author, support from fellow researches and active participation of foreign colleagues. Alexander Fedorets received recognition from the scientific community, was awarded domestic and international awards and granted the "Scientist of the Year" title. 

– Alexander, your breakthrough finding – the Droplet Cluster – is popular as ever. Your research received a grant from the Russian Science Foundation for a new project in this direction. Can you put it simply what is the "Theoretically based methods for generating and monitoring levitating droplet clusters and biochemical experiments in microreactor droplets" project?

– Within the framework of this grant, a very ambitious goal has been set: to create a technology that would allow the study of a wide variety of processes happening in aerosol microdroplets; in droplets so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye and at the same time they float in a gaseous environment.

For many scientists, this task seems too ambitious, because the matter we are working with – aerosol – is chaotic. It is a bizarre concept: to take a droplet of aerosol, secure it in place and study everything that happens with it. We no longer need to study a group, when we can look at a particular single drop. And each drop, for example, may contain a living microorganism. It can live there its entire short life and die there ... 

We are currently working on a methology that will allow studying such processes that will be later applied to develop methods, techniques and technology; the means that will allow for a purposeful, reliable investigation of the most diverse objects. This is one of the more global goals of the project.

– Have you already proved the very fact that you can work with and conduct research using this one separate droplet?

– Yes, and in the near future our article will be published in a very unusual, unique journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. It was launched in March 1665. The article will contain photographs showing how microorganisms exist in these microdroplets clusters. So what we are working with is a confirmed scientific phenomenon.

– The new grant project, judging by the information available, will be carried out by an international team. Who are the people behind the work and how did they join the project?

– The team that will be working on the project is a team of researches that we already implemented several projects with. The team was formed almost from the moment the laboratory was born. The laboratory was created in June 2016, and by the fall a research team was formed. Regarding the international collaboration aspect: one colleague resides in the United States, the other in Israel, the third, Leonid Domrovsky, is a Russian scientist, but has been working in London for the past few years. They are all world class scientists.

– This project must prove that dreams do come true. In an old interview, you were asked about your career goals. Back than you rejected the idea of going the commercial rout, but you did not mind joining a “good innovative research unit”. Now you already have a scientific laboratory, associates, students... What was the idea behind the Microhydrodynamic Technologies Laboratory, how did the team form and how did the partners join?

– Since then, nothing has changed in terms of my career ambitions. As for the laboratory ... The team continues to form, because the nature of the work we do is interdisciplinary, and we are very flexible in approaching challenges that arise. Physicists are the core of the team. Nevertheless, we are constantly in demand of specialists of ecology, fundamental biology, and agriculture. We are working on a powerful scientific tool that can be used to solve a wide variety of problems. Therefore, it is natural that one cannot make progress without cooperation with specialists of other profiles.

– Let's go back to 2016, when the laboratory was created. What was it like? 

– It happened quite naturally. We already had a good portfolio at that time. By “we” I mean a small team that worked within the framework of an informal laboratory, which we called “Cluster”. We did not do formal job titles, but there were tasks and people who solved them.

And at once it dawned on us, primarily due to being a part of the Project 5-100, that it was necessary to redirect the university resources to potentially promising areas.

We accessed the success of previously published works in the field (through international databases) and rated them in terms of their amount and quality. It turned out that the works that we’ve been sharing is among the leaders.

The second step to our success was. 

Trends always develop in Science. There are always some breakthrough areas, where very active work is carried out, resulting in major progress or a new discovery. We work in the field of microfluidics – a quickly developing area at the intersection of physics, biology, medicine. The technologies that this field produces may seem fictional. For example, the smallest and most inexpensive Lab-on-a-chip device can provide blood test results as accurately as the team of experts working in a lab.

Although, it should be noted that by 2016 microfluidics as a scientific direction was no longer new, but it was entering it’s most active development. And it continues to be so.

Thus, there were two main factors that justified the creation of the laboratory: development of a new scientific direction and the quality of our publications. One could even say that our work is conducted under unique circumstance – our research is based on the phenomenon we discovered, which is rare in the world of science.

To conclude, everything worked out for us, and the laboratory was created.

– The phenomenon you discovered could be studied for years to come…

– That is quite accurate, there is practically no limit. Currently, we are working, to use a popular term, on the front lines of the research in this area. There is a huge unexplored potential. Every step we take is an advancement in this area, a chance to expand the knowledge.

– Today it has become almost a reality to create an interregional center (connecting the Tyumen region, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug-Yugra and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) for Research and Education (REC). Your laboratory in particular is seen as a valuable addition to this project. What are you ready to contribute and what prospects do you see for yourself?

– As of now, we are working on fundamental problems. The results of our research can provide concrete benefits in solving problems of biosafety or help aid the agricultural processes. And that, as you know, is the main points of interest for the REC project. 

We are open to collaboration. We work in close contact with many colleagues outside of our team. This is beneficial for us, since we are working in such an interdisciplinary field where very high-tech and expensive equipment is involved and constant cooperation is a mast. Therefore, participation in such large projects as REC is inevitable and necessary.

The idea behind REC, such as uniting best minds, solving truly major scientific problems, including interdisciplinary ones, is very close to us. We recognize that in order to work on such global interdisciplinary problems we cannot limit ourselves to a small local team of specialists.

– What are the most significant events to happen in the last 15 years for droplet clusters, including your personal experience?

– This discovery was major event in my research career. I would not have been able to defend my doctoral dissertation (A. Fedorets became a doctor of technical sciences in 2011), where the main attention was paid to the phenomenon of the droplet cluster.

Without this meaningful new research, it would have been extremely difficult to assemble such a powerful scientific team. This discovery and its exiting unexplored nature fuel the scientific interest of our team.

But I would not call this events significant on their own. The development of this field is a long-term, evolutionary process that is difficult to tie to any specific date.

– Are other universities and international researchers are interested in this discovery?

– Today, several research groups, independent from one another, are working on this topic. Research is conducted in Russia, China, Japan and other countries ... Many scientists joined in on the research when we already studied many of its key components and the results were put forward.

It is exciting to see that many bright minds are joining this field. It is always suspicious to see a lack of interest for a current topic. When little to none researches are eager to work on a project, the conclusion is simple: nobody needs it.

However, this is not our case. A droplet cluster is a phenomenon that is truly interesting to various scientists from different scientific fields, primarily to thermal physicists who study the phenomenon from the standpoint of heat and mass transfer processes. The biological trend is our know-how.

– Do you keep up with the specialists that come from other fields?

– I know some of the leaders personally, we worked together previously. However, mostly we keep up with others by tracking their publications. I am glad to see that these researchers are highly praised and are picked up by respectable publishers.

Lots of collaboration is happening in the field. More recently, microbiologists from Tomsk State University visited us and conducted a series of experiments. It proved to be fruitful; an article about the result is in the works right now.

Although there are many scientific contacts, we are seeking to establish new ones. We are actively searching for contributors from leading scientific schools in the fields of ecology, microbiology, biochemistry.

– Such high interest in your research means that you not only offer good theoretical foundation topic, but also a good technical basis?

– Back in the day, I had to conduct experiments in research institutes in Novosibirsk and Moscow, because the necessary expensive devices were available only there. Later, we created our own unique research facility, and now everything related to experiments with droplet clusters takes place exclusively in our laboratory at X-BIO. For example, our equipment for biological experiments is one of a kind.

– In addition to working on the grant project, what other plans do the laboratory staff have? What is the direction you want to go in personally? If, of course, it is not a secret.

– Our goals are simple – to remain in the lead in our field. It is much more difficult to do this in a very competitive international scientific environment, but we will try.