In January 2020, the portal "The Future of Russia. National Projects", the operators of which are the TASS news agency and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation, launched the project "Science of the Future" in order to introduce readers to young scientists from different parts of our country. One of the heroes of the project was Novocherkassk Polytechnic - Candidate of Technical Sciences, senior researcher at the Research Institute "Nanotechnologies and New Materials" of YURSPU (NPI) Roman Yakovenko.

Roman Evgenievich is engaged in research and development in the field of processing natural and associated petroleum gases into synthetic motor fuels, high-octane gasoline, as well as into Arctic diesel fuel. "According to various estimates, from 14 to 50 billion cubic meters of gas are burned annually, which causes significant environmental and economic damage," says R.E. Yakovenko. "My research is aimed at solving the problem of APG utilization."

Not to burn associated petroleum gas, but to process it into high-quality Arctic diesel fuel - a young scientist, a scholarship holder of the President of Russia, set himself such a problem and was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Russian Scientific Foundation. The list of scientific works published by R.E. Yakovenko contains more than 60 titles, 20 of them in journals indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.