Scientists, lecturers, and students at the UG want to help their colleagues from Ukraine, for instance by offering them a job.
BY ROB VAN DER WAL AND GIULIA FABRIZI
All over the world, universities are offering four hundred PhD and post-doctoral positions to Ukrainian academics in need. Most of the positions are paid and can be found in a public Google Sheets document that is spreading like wildfire on LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media.
One of the academics who decided to offer a position is Cristina Paulino. The head of the electron microscopy lab at the Faculty of Science and Engineering wanted to join as soon as she saw the message on Twitter.
‘I am from the generation of open borders. As a European, I feel severely threatened and worried about what’s happening right now’, she says.
Thankful
Among her current group members is Ukrainian post-doctoral researcher Valeria Kalienkova. She is the other reason Paulino joined the initiative. ‘I’m very thankful that Cristina joined’, says Kalienkova.
Paulino is offering a temporary post-doc position, which means one Ukrainian academic can come to Groningen to work on membrane protein-related research until the end of this year.
‘If there’s anyone in this field who can benefit from a temporary exchange and stay with me for a few months, I’m happy to help.’
Science for Ukraine
Staff and students at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) are asking their board to grant displaced Ukrainian academics a temporary position.
Over the past few days, staff repeatedly asked the FEB faculty council to participate in the Science for Ukraine consortium. This is a collaboration between various universities worldwide that was created to help Ukrainian academics in the war zone.
One form of help is to offer them temporary positions at other universities. On the consortium’s Twitter page, academics from all over the world are sharing the positions that are open.
Displaced academics
‘We also currently have positions we still need to fill’, says council member Swarnodeep Homroy. On Monday, he wrote a letter to the board on behalf of the faculty council. ‘We want to know if we can use those positions to welcome and finance these displaced academics for six months to a year.
The FEB board is considering its options. ‘I don’t know if other faculties are doing this as well. But we have a clear agreement at least: if there’s something we can do to help, we should do it.’