Abstract. In the article, the author continues to acquaint the reader with representatives of the IMEMO scientific elite – academicians and corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who lead the most important areas of research at the Institute. Research teams engaged in the development of specific problems are united around them. Academician Aleksey Arbatov, prominent researcher and politician, deputy of the State Duma in 1994–2003, heads the IMEMO Center for International Security, which he has created. Its developments are implemented in real politics, and are also highly appreciated in the national and international expert community. Irina Semenenko, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, heads the Center for Comparative Socio-Economic and Political Studies at the Institute. She is known as a major specialist in the field of comparative political research, a comparative analysis of socio-political changes in the modern world. In the sphere of her professional attention there are tendencies of political transformations in Western countries and Russia. I. Semenenko has priority in developing the theory and methodology for studying identity as a resource for social development. Sergey Afontsev, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, began his career at IMEMO as a laboratory assistant and has come a long way to the position of Deputy Director, Head of the Department of Economic Theory. He is known as one of the most authoritative experts on fundamental and applied economic problems. His professional interests include a wide range of issues: international political economy, economic and political models for analyzing the processes of economic policy formation, managing global economic processes, applied issues of foreign trade and industrial policy, attracting investments and managing economic specialization, Russian-European economic relations. Another major theoretical economist, Rostislav Kapelyushnikov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has been fruitfully working at IMEMO for a long time: he is one of the best specialists in Russia in the new institutional economics, the Russian labor market, and methodological problems of economic science. All these specialists are the pride of IMEMO. They largely determine the high rating of the Institute as the most authoritative think tank in Russia in studying the problems of the modern world development.