Posted on behalf of Alla Katsnelson

The Russian Federation has announced the names of 40 scientists chosen to receive so-called ‘megagrants’ worth US$4.9 million each. The government plans to issue a second funding round by the end of this year, with the aim of selecting another 40 recipients in spring 2011.

The money, part of a scheme launched in April to build up government-supported science, is to be used to establish research projects with strong basic science foundations and a practical bent (see this Nature editorial for more). Researchers living abroad were also eligible for the award, as long as they agreed to spend four months out of the year pursuing their work in a Russian lab.

Winners of the first round included Ferid Murad of the University of Texas in Houston, a co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, and Stanislav Smirnov, a mathematician at the University of Geneva who received the Fields Medal this year.