PHOTO: AP PHOTO/MSTYSLAV CHERNOV
SCIENCE science.org 22 APRIL 2022 • VOL 376 ISSUE 6591 337I
n early February, when war clouds
were gathering over Ukraine, a more
personal darkness descended on Yuliia
Kosminska. Her 11-month-old daughter,
Alyona, tripped at their home—“just a
small fall, but she wasn’t feeling well,” says
Kosminska, a thin-film physicist at Sumy
State University in the country’s northeast.
Tests soon revealed an aggressive form of
leukemia, and Alyona was transferred to a
pediatric cancer clinic in Kyiv. “It was all very
quick,” she says, her voice
catching. On 24 February—
the very day the Russians
invaded—she got a call with
the news she was dreading:
Alyona had succumbed to
her illness.
Work was a salve for her
grief, but it was unsafe to
return to Sumy. Kosminska
found a glimmer of hope
through an emergency aid
program run by the Wolfgang
Pauli Institute (WPI), a math
and physics research center
in Austria. The program gives
scientists in Ukraine €
and Ph.D. students €1500—
no strings attached—to sus-
tain their lives and work.
Kosminska, one of the first
26 recipients, used some of
the money to buy a laptop to prepare an on-
line course on nanomaterials. “You must un-
derstand,” she says, “I have to do something.”
Labs around the world have offered suc-
cor to hundreds of Ukrainian scholars who
have fled their war-torn country. Far less
aid is available for those who, by choice or
necessity, have remained. Many have seen
their salary payments reduced or stopped
as institutes divert resources to the nation’s
defense. Some have had to flee their homes.
They had no one to turn to—until WPI and a
few other outfits started to toss lifelines. The
sums are small; WPI’s initial budget is just
€50,000. But the initiatives “are of crucial
importance for saving basic and applied sci-
ence in Ukraine,” says Anatoliy Zagorodny,
president of the National Academy of Sci-
ences of Ukraine (NASU). Such efforts could
help stanch a brain drain that many fear will
leave Ukraine depleted long after the war.“We understand that many of these refugees
will not return,” says Sergiy Ryabchenko of
the Institute of Physics.
Grander rescue packages await Ukraine
after the war. The U.S. government has be-
gun to discuss the contours of a Marshall
Plan, reminiscent of the U.S. effort to rebuild
Europe after World War II. Science will not
be left out, says Kenneth Myers, president of
CRDF Global, a U.S. nonprofit that runs sci-
ence assistance programs in former Soviet
Union nations. “The idea is to not just bring
them back to preinvasion levels, but to investin areas where they can leapfrog and become
leaders in science,” Myers says.
For now, the focus is survival. Scientists
marooned in conflict areas are most at risk,
Zagorodny says. With Russian troops mount-
ing a renewed assault on eastern Ukraine,
NASU intends to steer €20,000 in aid from
the French Academy of Sciences to research-
ers in eastern science strongholds like
Kharkiv and Sumy.
WPI’s project is already keeping 17 scien-
tists in those cities afloat. Ihor Shpetnyy, an
experimental physicist at Sumy State, stayed
behind when fellow residents evacuated. “My
task was to find and buy medicine for my par-
ents,” he says. His mother’s treatment for pul-
monary hypertension costs €500 per month.
With his salary halved to €220 per month, he
says, the WPI money was a lifesaver.
A WPI grant was a career saver for
Mykhaylo Mykhaylov. At the end of lastyear, the solid state physicist had just fin-
ished renovating his lab at the Verkin In-
stitute for Low Temperature Physics and
Engineering in Kharkiv. Barely 2 months
later, with Kharkiv under siege, Mykhaylov
escorted his wife and 10-year-old son to the
border with Slovakia. He had to say good-
bye, because most men under age 60 are
barred from leaving Ukraine in anticipation
of being called to fight. “We visited a notary,
and I made a will. Then I gave my wife all
our savings,” he says.
Mykhaylov returned to a home wrecked
by shelling with €300 in his
pocket. “I was considering
quitting research,” he says.
A WPI grant helped him
rent an apartment outside
Kharkiv—and stick with sci-
ence. He’s writing up a re-
search paper and “eager to
return to experimental work,
once normality is restored.”
Other organizations are
joining the rescue effort.
The Foundation for Polish
Science will fund at least six
social science collaborations
between scientists in Poland
and Ukraine this year; each
team will receive €58,
over 1 year for salaries and
research expenses. And the
Krzysztof Skubiszewski Foun-
dation, also in Poland, plans
to disburse at least €240,000 to scholars in
Ukraine and refugees in Poland, with most
of it going to those in Ukraine. The French
Academy of Sciences is seeking additional
funds for NASU from French foundations,
and Austria’s science ministry just contrib-
uted €50,000 to WPI, which will enable it to
support another two dozen or so researchers.
The sooner the war ends, the sooner
Ukraine can shift from science survival to
revival. But first it must endure whatever
Russia has in store in the east. In Kharkiv
and Sumy, frequent air-raid sirens shatter
daily rhythms. “The Russians can come back
at any time,” says Kosminska, who returned
to Sumy with her husband in early April
to bury Alyona. Teaching and planning for
future experiments help her cope, as does
commiserating with friends and colleagues
who have also borne hardship and loss. “I
can say, for now, I’m OK,” she says. jKharkiv, Ukraine, 1 week before Russia invaded. Institutes in the city have suffered damage.By Richard StoneEUROPEAid keeps researchers afloat in war-torn Ukraine
Fledgling programs aim to sustain lives and work, and stem brain drain
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