UBBC and Bath Spa University attended the UK-UKR research twinning showcase over two days at Liverpool university. The objective was to showcase and assess the extent of the collaborations, and to discuss how to extend and develop initiatives and create long term strategic alliances.
What was clear, was the collaboration extended into various and different ways, depending on university finances, volunteering, and straight research grant support.
The Cormack group have been charged with many of the twinning initiatives and distribution of support grants and play a proactive role. To date there have been over 100 twining partnerships – 6 dual degrees developed, 12k English language students, £50m in donations, for over 550 individual projects initiated with money from the Universities, Government (FCDO) and Research councils and more. The UK Universities association is overseeing opportunities for grants from numerous sources including ODA.
Many UK universities developed mentoring programs for UKR students and lecturers, often during summer vacation camps, but also on-going online support – to ensure the recipients felt in touch with what was going on in their areas of research, offering intellectual and knowledge support to UKR and most importantly emotional and morale support during difficult times. In relation to straight research collaboration, there are several innovative and productive projects where UK and UKR work on equal footing and often where UKR academics and scientists lead.
The nature of the work covers many STEM projects, but also Humanities and English literature interactions, such as the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare initiatives, engaged with European and UKR festivals. Of particular interest is the BrigdeUkraine.org initiative for civil engineering with both Birmingham and Brunel universities, who are leading on infrastructure resilience and innovation for example in a project to build 25 houses in Hostomel using rubble. The Royal agricultural university is working on a project to de-risk bomb craters in agricultural land, with analysis of the type and depth of craters categorised by drones and AI, to enable farmers to avoid the worst dangers of heavy metal and munition residues and focus on the least damaging areas.
Edgehill university has created dual degrees with UKR on international law, regulations and criminality and transitional justice and Human rites in war time UKR. Newcastle University offers water planning engineering degree, including catchment areas for hydro planning and water resilience in conflicted areas. Bath Spa presented on democracy collaboration and multimedia university collaboration systems. And Heriot Watt on innovative sub surface geo energy systems as did Edinburgh university along with smart city and urban planning regeneration and cultural lab and languages support, which they have been doing since 1986. Nottingham university focused on open lab learning and innovative ways to work, in a hybrid university system, St Andrews on training for 65 lecturers for maths, AI lecturers and university courses/ Durham on fintech and cyber security courses and digital infrastructure, Kings College working with UKR military to analyse evolution in warfare, and Kent Uni linking the 145,000 UKR refugees with community through a local program with their 1000.
The main challenges now are to source further research funding and ensure these productive and innovative projects can continue for the long term.
A further conference is being organised for July 24. If any companies are interested to fund or contribute to research programs, please contact london@ukrainbritainbusiness.org
AG. 2/4/24
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