The Project aims to create the first national-level Postgraduate Training Network in Biotechnology of Neurosciences (BioN). The BioN will optimize the use of the limited recourses available for postgraduatelevel education in Russia, stimulate national and international cooperation, enhance mobility of students and teachers. The BioN will become a sustainable network of leading Russian universities and research laboratoris coordinating three-cycle education. During the project a new post-graduate curriculum will be developed, workshops and intensive courses will be provided to Russian PhD students and teachers.Virtually missing in Russian post-graduate education now, the ECTS will be introduced in the BioN. The BioN will provide a new level of management in PhD education giving a real opportunity for the scientific community and students to influence and guide the development of the graduate school. Students will be encouraged to attend short intensive courses at EU partner institutions, whereas individual experts and European Consortium Members will give short advanced intensive courses and training at the Russian partner sites (e.g., biotechnology, brain-imaging methods, synaptic transmission etc.). Furthermore, web seminars and lectures will be launched to reinforce the BioN as an educational network. A web-interactive library for the project will be created to support up-to-date curricula in all Russian partner universities. The BioN will become a Centre for innovations in Biotechnology with the aim to: (a) teach new methods in biotechnology, neuroscience, information technology and biomedicine; (b) consult innovation projects; (c) consolidate and disseminate information on funding opportunities, (d) create regular seminars on biotechnology; (e) perform expert evaluation of the innovation projects, (f) disseminate and perform knowledge transfer.The results of the project will be disseminated to other Russian universities via seminars, web materials, and via reports to the local councils of rectors. A template or a model for a PhD programme based both on international experience and on recourses available at some of the most advanced Russian Universities, and making it open and available nationally on a competitive basis will be an efficient way of stimulating thepostgraduate education reform which is vitally necessary and long overdue in Russia.