The National Antarctic Scientific Centre has attracted the most funds from the EU’s Horizon Europe programme among all Ukrainian scientific institutions.
In testimony to this, the Minister of Education and Science Oksen Lisovyi awarded the Centre with a commendation ‘for the most effective participation in the programme’.
The award ceremony took place in Kharkiv on 20 November as part of the World Science Day celebrations.
The NASC won the award thanks to two Horizon Europe projects:
- Ocean-Cryosphere Exchanges in Antarctica: Impacts on Climate and the Earth System (OCEAN:ICE)
- Polar Research Infrastructure network(POLARIN).
The share of NASC in the both project together is €1 243 585.
The European Commission allocated funds for the projects in 2023, and their implementation started in 2024.
The Director of the NASC Evgen Dykyi, who actually received the award, said: ‘The Horizon Europe projects are extremely important additional funding for science in times of war, as well as an opportunity for our scientists to participate in world-class research with colleagues from leading EU universities and institutes. But besides this, the Horizon calls are fair and objective competitions where the strongest win. And the fact that the National Antartic Scientific Center of Ukraine, with its tiny staff, is ahead of all other scientific institutions in Ukraine is an unbiased international assessment of the scientific level of our polar researchers and the relevance of our work in the global context. It is also an answer to those who still wonder why we need to study penguins :)’.
In total, NASC scientists are currently involved in five projects with EU financial support. Together with the aforementioned POLARIN and OCEAN:ICE, these are:
- Open Practices, Transparency and Integrity for Modern Academia (OPTIMA)
- Polar regions in the Earth systems (PolarRES)
- Unlocking the hidden treasures of aquatic extremophiles: sustainable development of industrially relevant novel active biomolecules (EXPLORA).
All projects, except the last one, can be found here:
http://uac.gov.ua/en/international-cooperation-en/international-projects/
Soon the information on the EXPLORA project, which is about to start, will be added. A small spoiler: it is dedicated to the study of the beneficial properties of microorganisms exposed to the extreme conditions of the Antarctic.
We are proud of our achievements and always remember that they are possible primarily thanks to the defenders of Ukraine.