NIERSC was officially founded in 1992 in St. Petersburg, Russia after the initiation by Prof. Ola M. Johannessen and Academician Kirill Ya. Kondratyev.
The joint-venture had four co-founders:
•Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, Bergen, Norway;
•Research Centre for Ecological Safety of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia;
•Max Planck Society, Munich, Germany; and
•Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Ann-Arbor, MI, USA
with a contribution from the
•Joint Research Centre of the European Commission by Prof. Jean-Pierre Contzen.
In 2001 NIERSC was re-registred into a non-profit Scientific Foundation within the NANSEN Group. At present it has six founders.
In 2000-2004 NIERSC acted as the "INTAS Information Desk" for St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Pskov regions providing assistance to INTAS (International Association for the promotion of co-operation with scientists from the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union).
The Scientific Foundation NIERSC acts not only as a pure scientific but also an educational Center, which along with conducting extensive research studies provides favorable conditions for young scientists to work over their PhD theses. This is intended to ensure continuity in the development of the Russian science.
