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loys. This makes it economically feasible to manufacture components for orthopedic prosthetics, fasteners, and other items from titanium alloys.

The company conducts business in the European and Russian markets. To date, its most important customers are Pertsch & Partner (Germany), Scanburg AB (Sweden), and Teb AB (Sweden). Titan currently employs about 120 people.

The open joint-stock company Rehabilitation Center was founded in 1997 to develop and introduce into practice medical technologies, mainly diagnostic and prophylactic in nature. The company has several projects under way, two of which are funded by U.S. partners under the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI). These projects are aimed at creating a Laparoscopy Center (opened in July 2001) and a Telemedicine Center in Sarov. The partner (Medical College of Georgia) provided free delivery of the specialized laparascopic equipment and trained the new center's 12-person staff. In this particular case the foreign partner is an investor in the Russian enterprise.

The Open Computer Center (OCC) is one of the first projects carried out under the NCI Program, opening on October 1, 1999. The firm has been accorded the status of a unitary state enterprise. The OCC project is related to defense conversion and was not started from scratch, but rather on the basis of the existing history of scientific collaboration between specialists from VNIIEF and colleagues from the U.S. national laboratories. A foundation for the project was also provided by research work done by VNIIEF scientists on projects for the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) and work on developing software for microprocessors for Intel, among others. The main activities of OCC are the following:

Initially, collaboration with the foreign partner was pursued along two main lines:

At present OCC has 76 fully equipped workstations, but the company plans to expand to a staff of 200.