Major research themes

Karelian Research Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KarRC RAS) is the only scientific institution in the Republic of Karelia with the status of a leading scientific organization of Russia and the principal objective of implementing basic and exploratory research.
Karelian Research Centre RAS now comprises seven institutes: Institute of Biology, Northern Water Problems Institute, Institute of Geology, Forest Research Institute, Institute of Applied Mathematical Research, Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History, as well as the Department for Multidisciplinary Research.
The Centre permanently employs 742 persons, including 373 research staff. Permanent staff includes 1 RAS Academician, 5 RAS Corresponding Academicians, 60 Doctors of Science (postdocs), and 213 Candidates of Science (PhD).

KarRC RAS scientists implement basic, exploratory and applied research in the following areas:

• formation history and functioning of natural ecosystems in the North, ecosystem development forecasting under various climate change and human impact scenarios;
• functioning of living systems at the different levels of complexity (molecule, cell, organism, population, and ecosystem) in the North;
• biological diversity of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, development of biological grounds for the conservation of plants and animals and their habitats, for the management of biological resources, techniques for their use and restoration;
• mechanisms behind adaptations and the diversity of adaptive strategies, and their roles in the life of plant and animal organisms under cyclic fluctuations and extreme natural and anthropogenic impacts;
• structure, composition, formation environment, evolution of the Earth's lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere;
• global correlations of the Precambrian, minerageny, and mineral resources of the Republic of Karelia;
• integrated technologies: shungites, industrial minerals, rock species, nanostructures and nanotechnologies;
• Precambrian geotectonics, neotectonics, seismicity and geoecology of Northwest Russia;
• assessment of the state of natural resources of northern territories and scientific substantiation of their sustainable use, development of biotechnology solutions;
• identification of fundamental patterns in the functioning of aquatic ecosystems and their variation under natural and anthropogenic impacts;
• assessment of the state of water resources, the territory’s ecological water potential, and development of the scientific basis for the management of water resources in the Russian North, including their protection, use, and restoration;
• scientific substantiation of nature conservation and restoration actions and methods for predicting changes in the state of waterbodies;
• analysis of the resilience of waterbodies under human impacts (pulp-and-paper, metal, and mining industries, drainage for agriculture and forestry, logging, oil and gas industry) in the Russian North;
• topical problems of discrete mathematics, mathematical programming, probability theory and mathematical statistics with applications in economics, biology, ecology, theory of new-generation information and computing systems;
• methods of mathematical modeling and computational mathematics, computer linguistics for dealing with scientific, ecological, energy and other problems of the natural and socio-cultural environment using high-performance computing techniques;
• designing and upgrading emerging information, telecommunication systems and software complexes for data analysis and scientific studies;
• theory and methods of mathematical modeling in economics and forecasting social, ecological, economic and innovative development of territories;
• scientific foundations of regional policies, sustainable innovative development of regions and municipalities, transformation of the socio-economic space;
• socio-economic development of border regions and economic, ecological, social and information security issues;
• advancing the methodology of economic and sociological measurement and data analysis, monitoring and designing socio-economic development of territories;
• history of Karelia in the pan-Russian and North-European context;
• ethnogenesis, ethno-social and ethno-cultural processes in Karelia and adjacent regions;
• problems of identification and conservation of the cultural, archeological, and scientific heritage of the region and adjacent territories;
• conservation and fostering of indigenous cultures of Russia’s European North;
• evolution and functioning of Balto-Finnic languages and their interactions with Russian;
• position and role of the literature and folklore of Karelia and the European North in the pan-Russian and world heritage, their interactions with the oral and written traditions of the neighboring territories;
• improvement and development of new (tailored to specific soil and climatic conditions) resource-saving and environmentally safe technologies for cultivating agricultural and non-traditional crops, as well as for crop production;
• selective breeding, variety testing and seed production (mother, elite and reproduction) of agricultural and non-traditional crops;
• scientific research in the spheres of land reclamation and horticulture;
• enhancement of the organizational and economic framework for the development of crop and livestock husbandry in the European North of Russia.

The research areas of KarRC RAS are aligned with the Strategy of Scientific and Technological Development of the Russian Federation (approved by Presidential Decree No. 145 of 28.02.2024), priority areas of scientific and technological development, and the list of major knowledge-intensive technologies (approved by Decree No.529 of the President of the Russian Federation dated 18.06.2024).
Within the national project “Science and Universities” five new youth laboratories (3 in 2019, 1 in 2022, and 1 in 2024) were created at KarRC RAS: Laboratory of Digital Technologies for Regional Development, Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology, Laboratory for Environmental Monitoring and Modeling, Laboratory for Greenhouse Gas Monitoring, Laboratory for Integrated Arctic Studies.