Gennadiy N. Lepeshkin: I still have lots of friends in Stepnogorsk. One of them is Irina Paramonova. We became friends when she was working at our facility, with my wife, uh-huh. And we have remained close... And I decided to pay her a visit. I brought her gifts from my wife, and we had a very interesting talk. Currently, she works in the environmental monitoring lab, managing the microbiology laboratory, she is a highly qualified researcher, you could even say that she is pivotal to the whole laboratory, in terms of research, microbiology research.
The microbiology lab was started up following the conversion of the Stepnogorsk research and development facility. The organization was established using American funds, American money received as part of the program.
That laboratory has modern equipment, analytic equipment, which makes it possible to do very complex analyses. It was certified and is one of the key... one of Kazakhstan's key laboratories.