As rector, Vladimir Litvinenko has brought St. Petersburg Mining University to the forefront of global mining education. His efforts to modernize the infrastructure, improve educational programs, enhance the quality of teaching staff, and integrate into the international scientific and educational space have been recognized by the British consulting company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). This is one of the three most respected international agencies, which annually rank the best universities in the world.
For five years in a row, the Mining University has been in the top 20 of QS subject rankings in the field of mining engineering. In 2022, for the first time ever, British experts ranked it seventh in the world. No other Russian institution of higher education has ever achieved such an impressive result.
In many aspects, this was possible thanks to the attraction of substantial extra-budgetary funds received from research and development, in particular, scientific support of numerous projects of leading mining and energy holdings. Mining University's partners include Novatek, Rosneft, Russian Copper Company, Polyus, SIBUR, PhosAgro, and many other flagships of the national industry.
Their investments and the University's own profits allowed to overhaul all educational, laboratory and administrative buildings of the University, as well as the Mining Museum, to create a powerful modern laboratory base for all areas of training and to fully computerize the educational and scientific process.
The University has six research centers with the most advanced equipment. Just in the last few years, thanks to the direct participation of Vladimir Litvinenko, the BELAZ Center of Excellence, offshore oil and gas production training and simulation complexes, as well as management of mining and Caterpillar machinery have been opened.
Together with the French company Schneider Electric, a laboratory for intelligent power supply management was created.
In 2020, despite the pandemic, the high-performance computing laboratory for modeling production processes opened its doors to scientists and advanced students alike.
Vladimir Litvinenko also initiated the construction of a new, third academic building on Maly Avenue on Vasilievsky Island and a multifunctional complex with a congress hall for 2,000 seats, designed for large scientific conferences, including international events. With his direct participation the number of dormitories for undergraduate and graduate students was increased ten-fold. All of them are comfortable rooms that fully meet modern standards.
Every year hundreds of millions of rubles are allocated for renovation works that are necessary to maintain the achieved level of scientific and educational and social environment at all the objects of the university. The area of the premises reconstructed using these funds exceeds 100 thousand square meters. The builders' task is not only to cosmetically renovate the classroom and laboratory facilities, but also to comply with all modern requirements, including energy efficiency and educational activities.