Bayreuth Bridge for Science supports refugee Ukrainian academics

"I am very grateful that our UBT family is so committed to advising and supporting our Ukrainian colleagues. And I am confident that the cooperation will continue beyond this terrible war to strengthen Ukraine as a science location. I sincerely thank the foundations involved, first and foremost the Rainer Markgraf Foundation and the Adalbert Raps Foundation, for their generous support and commitment," says Prof. Dr. Stefan Leible, President of the University of Bayreuth. Through the specially established Bayreuth Bridge for Science, two more female researchers can now be funded with the support of the Rainer Markgraf Foundation and the Adalbert Raps Foundation.

Dr. Oksana Horbach is a lecturer at the Department of Legal Linguistics at the National Academy of Internal Affairs in Kyiv and will be a guest of Prof. Dr. Karin Birkner, Chair of German Linguistics, from October. Together they are working on a theoretical-practical specialised course on "Specialised Languages in Contemporary German" with a focus on the fields of business, media and science.

Dr. Kateryna Tryma will work together with colleagues at the Fortbildungszentrum Hochschullehre (FBZHL) under the direction of PD Dr. Frank Meyer from August. The cooperation will focus on the principles and opportunities of virtual learning with the help of so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which enrich university teaching at the UBT, especially in times of the pandemic. As part of the Bayreuth Bridge, the academics receive a nine-month bridge scholarship, German language courses and access to the university's networking and advisory services.

Prof. Dr. Natalia Morkun has already been funded since April through the Volkswagen Foundation's Visiting Research Programme for Ukrainian academics who have fled. Since August, she has been a Philipp Schwartz Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. At the chair of her host Prof. Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Fischerauer, the holder of the Chair of Measurement and Control Technology, she is working, among other things, on improving the extraction of useful components in concentrates during the processing of iron-bearing ores, reducing the costs of the end products and thus increasing competitiveness on the world market. The Philipp Schwartz Initiative was launched by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation together with the Federal Foreign Office and enables universities, universities of applied sciences and non-university research institutions in Germany to award fellowships for research stays to researchers at risk.

Since the end of February, the Research Support Office and the International Office of the UBT have been advising numerous researchers who had to flee Ukraine in order to bring themselves and their families to safety. In addition to German courses and information about the German academic system, the focus is always on opportunities for cooperation with Bayreuth colleagues and funding for guest stays at the University of Bayreuth. So far, nine Ukrainian researchers at UBT have received funding from the Volkswagen Foundation, the German Research Foundation and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, but also from the hosts' own financial resources.