St Petersburg Academic University — Nanotechnology Research and Education Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (the Academic University, SPbAU RAS) was founded in 1997 as Research and Education Center of the Ioffe Institute to integrate science and education in the field of physics and information technologies. It is the only university in the Russian Academy of Sciences. The word "Academic" in its name stems from the Academy of Sciences, the organization that unites numerous research institutes in Russia. It was initiated by the director of the Ioffe Institute, vice-president of the RAS Academician and Nobel prize winner Zhores Alferov, who has been its head up to the present.