CESAER continues its support to our Member in Ukraine

Since the beginning of the war, our association condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the strongest terms and expressed our deepest concerns about the consequent suffering.

On 1 January last year, we welcomed the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (KPI) as our newest Member.

As recalled by KPI’s Rector Mykhailo Zgurovsky: “Founded in 1898, KPI is one of the most prestigious and well-known institutions in Ukraine, and one of the largest research universities of science and technology in Eastern Europe”.

Our collaboration with KPI was, from the get go, highly qualitative and fruitful. We have KPI representatives in all of our seven task forces. The war in Ukraine highlighted the utmost importance of the topic of knowledge safety and security which led to a workshop organised by our Task Force Openness of Science and Technology on ‘Keeping Science Open: current tensions in policy discourse on international scientific cooperation’ in March 2023 and the publication of a white paper ‘Keeping science open? Current challenges in the day-to-day reality of universities’ in October 2023.

At CESAER Annual Meetings (CAM) 2023 in Madrid, we were honoured to meet in-person with Serhii Sydorenko (second from the left in the photo), Vice-Rector for International Relations at KPI and Delegate within our General Assembly. This was the perfect occasion to reiterate our support to KPI and discuss how we can best strengthen our ties.

For more information, please contact Secretary General Mattias Björnmalm.

On the photo (from left to right): Mihnea Costoiu (CESAER Director & Rector of University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest), Serhii Sydorenko, Rik Van De Walle (CESAER Envoy to the Belgian Presidency of the EU & Rector of Ghent University), Jennifer Herek (CESAER Vice-President and Treasurer & Dean of Faculty Science & Technology at University of Twente).