By Florin Zubascu
Few researchers in Ukraine are able to continue work, and most have left their posts to join the army, hide in bomb shelters or flee the country
Science in Ukraine has come to a halt. Russia’s invasion has crippled the country’s newly established research agency and forced its leader to a bomb shelter in Kyiv.
During the day, Olga Polotska, the executive director of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU), is helping deliver food and supplies across Kyiv. At night she has to go back to an underground shelter from where she is trying to keep herself and her agency alive, checking updates on social media from researchers scattered across the country.
In a phone interview with SciencełBusiness from Kyiv 28 February, she appeals for assistance to Ukrainian scientists. Any kind of international joint programmes involving Ukrainian researchers would help keep the country’s science base alive. “Ukrainian scientists will need a lot of support,” Polotska said.
The agency was founded in 2018 and became fully operational only two years later. It was part of a push by the Ukrainian government to establish a research institution that can organise transparent and excellence-based funding competitions for Ukrainian researchers. The new institution was expected to help improve an underfunded research system and to halt the exodus of academics and scientists to the west.
The new agency was meant to give Ukraine’s top scientists the opportunity to compete for money outside the regular funding that usually covers the basics: salaries and the utility bills. “Ukrainian science has been underfinanced for many years,” Polotska said....
Science in Ukraine has come to a halt. Russia’s invasion has crippled the country’s newly established research agency and forced its leader to a bomb shelter in Kyiv.
During the day, Olga Polotska, the executive director of the National Research Foundation of Ukraine (NRFU), is helping deliver food and supplies across Kyiv. At night she has to go back to an underground shelter from where she is trying to keep herself and her agency alive, checking updates on social media from researchers scattered across the country.
In a phone interview with SciencełBusiness from Kyiv 28 February, she appeals for assistance to Ukrainian scientists. Any kind of international joint programmes involving Ukrainian researchers would help keep the country’s science base alive. “Ukrainian scientists will need a lot of support,” Polotska said.
The agency was founded in 2018 and became fully operational only two years later. It was part of a push by the Ukrainian government to establish a research institution that can organise transparent and excellence-based funding competitions for Ukrainian researchers. The new institution was expected to help improve an underfunded research system and to halt the exodus of academics and scientists to the west.
The new agency was meant to give Ukraine’s top scientists the opportunity to compete for money outside the regular funding that usually covers the basics: salaries and the utility bills. “Ukrainian science has been underfinanced for many years,” Polotska said....
