The daughter of the Russian president has won a grant for 30 million rubles to research cell renewal processes in the body.
Putin’s eldest daughter, endocrinologist Maria Vorontsova, has won a grant of 30 million rubles from the Russian Science Foundation (RNF), despite a low Hirsch index – an indicator reflecting the citation rate of a scientist and the number of his publications. As T-Invariant writes, the grant is devoted to the study of cell renewal processes in the body as the basis for longevity and human health, and the funds were allocated under the program for financing world-class scientific laboratories.
Vorontsova’s Hirsch Index is only about 5 points (if we believe the Russian database elibrary.ru). At the same time, most of the 26 winners of the RNF grant competition in 2025 have an index ranging from 30 to 60 units, the journalists found out from the Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar databases, in which Vorontsova’s profile is absent.
This way she is trying to increase her importance in the scientific hierarchy of the country, one of the regular RNF grantees believes. “It is not very clear why Vorontsova needs such pennies, about 30 million rubles. Obviously, any money will be found for her aging work. Probably, she is like a wedding general: the application was written by her colleagues at the faculty, and for her it is important in terms of academic status,” he noted.
Vorontsova is a candidate of medical sciences, associate professor at the Department of Internal Medicine of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine at Moscow State University, deputy dean for scientific work at the faculty and a member of the Academic Council of the university. She is also considered the supervisor of the state program to develop Russian genetics for 127 billion rubles, the publication notes.
In the spring of 2022, Maria Vorontsova was included in the sanctions lists of the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Japan. “Vorontsova manages state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally supervised by Putin,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.