With the funding programme „Establishing German-Ukrainian Excellence Centers (CoE) in Ukraine“, the BMBF is supporting the establishment of excellent German-Ukrainian working groups in the Ukraine, thereby expanding bilateral research and development expertise on a sustainable basis. The German-Ukrainian research group of IAMO and the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) is one of the projects selected in a competitive procedure. Since November 2021, in addition to IAMO/KSE, eleven other German-Ukrainian teams have been developing concepts for setting up the cores of excellence, some of which will eventually be funded and established.
Anka Feldhusen, German Ambassador to Ukraine, welcomed all participants to the kick-off meeting and wished the project groups successful cooperation and the establishment of a sustainable relationship between the Ukrainian and German project partners within the framework of the funding programme. Dr Jens Brandenburg, Parliamentary State Secretary at the BMBF, Prof. Oleksii Shkuratov, Vice Minister for European Integration at the MESU, and Prof. Anatolii Zahorodnii, President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of Ukraine, welcomed the participants as well.
The IAMO/KSE team was represented at the meeting by IAMO Director Professor Thomas Glauben, Dr Oleksandr Perekhozhuk, Dr Inna Levkovych, Dr Taras Gagalyuk, Dr Vasyl Kvartiuk, as well as by Vice-Rector Prof. Oleg Nivievskyi from KSE. Mr Glauben presented the IAMO/KSE project GUCE-SAFE (German-Ukrainian Centre of Excellence for Smart Agriculture and Food Economics) as a short pitch. The goal of the project is not only to establish high-performance innovation research in Ukraine in a core of excellence, but also to closely link top-level science in an “ideas factory” with the knowledge and experience of agro-business, politics and civil society in a transdisciplinary approach. The IAMO/KSE research group works closely with other project partners in Ukraine and Germany.
The kick-off meeting was attended by around one hundred people, including representatives of the BMBF, the project administrator German Aerospace Center (DLR), the MESU, the German Embassy in Kiev, project participants from Ukrainian and German research institutions and universities, national and EU research and funding organisations, as well as other German, Ukrainian and European institutions.
