Koltsovo is an urban locality (a work settlement

Urban-type settlement

Urban-type settlement ; , selyshche mis'koho typu ) is an official designation for a type of locality used in some of the countries of the former Soviet Union...

) in Novosibirsky District

Novosibirsky District

Novosibirsky District is an administrative district , one of the 30 in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia....

 of Novosibirsk Oblast

Novosibirsk Oblast

Novosibirsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia located in southwestern Siberia. Its administrative and economic center is the city of Novosibirsk. Population: -Overview:...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, located 25 kilometres (15.5 mi) from Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk

Novosibirsk is the third-largest city in Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and the largest city of Siberia, with a population of 1,473,737 . It is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District...

. Population:

Municipally, Koltsovo is incorporated as Koltsovo Urban Okrug. The area of the urban okrug is 6.5 square kilometres (2.5 sq mi).

It was founded on August 30, 1979 as a settlement for the employees of the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology VECTOR, named after Nikolai Koltsov

Nikolai Koltsov

Nikolai Konstantinovich Koltsov was a Russian biologist. He was one of the creators of modern genetics. Nikolai Koltsov was a teacher of Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky.-Scientific career:...

, a Russian biologist. On January 17, 2003, Koltsovo was granted naukograd

Naukograd

A naukograd , meaning "science city", is a formal term for towns with high concentration of research and development facilities in Russia and the Soviet Union, some specifically built by the Soviet Union for these purposes. Some of the towns were secret, and were part of a larger system of closed...

(scientific city) status, which it is to retain until the end of 2025. It is one of two places in the world which is an official repository of smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

.