On Supporting Science in Ukraine One Year After the Invasion

One year ago, on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale military offensive in Ukraine. Since then, countless Ukrainian families have mourned the loss of their loved ones, and many others have been forced to flee their homes. Attacks on civil infrastructures have brought immense hardship to millions of civilians. We should do everything possible to protect human life. We also should do everything possible to protect the science and higher education sector in Ukraine from the war-inflicted decline, the growing generation gap, and a “brain drain.”

On 2 June 2022, a number of national academies of sciences convened in Warsaw to work on an action plan for science in Ukraine. The results of this meeting, along with the 10-point action plan, were shared with the scientific community in Science, Vol. 376 (6599), p. 1249. Since then, we have taken a number of steps to support scholars from and in Ukraine, aligned with the 10-point action plan:

• We launched a program to enable scientists who had left Ukraine to stay in science. In total, we have hosted 218 Ukrainian fellows for up to 10 months.
• We organized a number of training opportunities addressed to Ukrainian scientists in English or Ukrainian. In total, nearly 600 participants have attended these workshops.
• We launched a grant program for Ukrainian research teams with a Ukrainian PI being hosted at a research unit in Poland plus his or her research team members, including predoctoral researchers, staying outside or inside Ukraine.

All of the above would not be possible without intensive cooperation between academies of sciences and the friendly support of international scientific organizations in Europe and beyond.

Nevertheless, we believe there is still much room for more action and more support. We urge the scientific community around the world to continue helping scientists from and in Ukraine and to outline plans for the post-war recovery of science in the country. The future prosperity of Ukraine will hinge upon human resources and infrastructure, particularly the modernization of the country’s research, innovation, and education sector.

We strongly believe that this unjustified aggression will end, and that Ukraine will prevail. We are witnessing the struggle of the scientific community in Ukraine against a brutal war. In the face of injustice, let us join forces to support science!

 

Marek Konarzewski
President
Polish Academy of Sciences

 

Marcia McNutt
President
U.S. National Academy of Sciences

 

Anatoly Zagorodny
President
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine