Within the research laboratory of the Physics of advanced Tokamaks, which has been founded in 2011on the basis of a MEGA-Grant, the two groups from the university and the Ioffe Institute cooperate on the three tokamaks, Globus-m, Tuman-3m and fT-2. The research of both partners benefitted from the means of the MEGA-Grant. The laboratory has given itself a transparent governing structure and its annual outcome is assessed by an international advisory committee. a graduate school has been founded to ensureproper education. The laboratory could serve as a model for integrated research and education centre in Russian thermonuclear program. The urgent need to modernize the Russian fusion devices has become obvious.