UT researchers advised Ukraine on organising knowledge transfer

UT researchers Associate Professor Aleksei Kelli and Professor Kadri Ukrainski, together with partners from Ukraine, organised a seminar in Ukraine on 12 April entitled “Research Organizations and Universities Knowledge Transfer in Ukraine: The Improvement of the Policy and Mechanisms in Ukraine, based on EU Experience“.

The aim was to advise officials of Ukrainian ministries, members of universities and the institutes of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine about experiences with organising knowledge transfer in Estonia and the European Union. Great interest was shown in Estonia’s experience because they consider us a great example whose experience seems reasonable to apply in Ukrainian conditions.

At the seminar, Ukrainian researchers reproached the government for not giving innovation enough importance, not guaranteeing elementary resources for research and for their research system being relatively closed on the European direction (they have very few international students and lecturers from the EU). Meanwhile, they also found problems which were similar to Estonia’s, namely the country’s low capability to prioritise and little cooperation between the research system and the private and public sector. Knowledge transfer in Ukraine is in the stage of development where, similarly to Estonia in the 1990s, they are beginning to organise knowledge transfer in universities. The necessary work units have been established in the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, but there are problems with their financing and productivity—Ukrainian researchers apply for numerous patents but they only get few of them.

In the course of the project, lectures were also held at the Kyiv National Economic University, where students were very interested in the commercialisation of research results in social sciences and humanities as well as in the success story of Estonian economy and especially ICT. The students’ interest was so big that the lively discussion had to be abruptly interrupted by the professor of the next lecture. It was agreed that such lectures would be organised again in the future; in addition, information was given about the opportunities to study in Estonia.

The organisation of the seminar and lectures and the related research project was financed by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

More information:
Aleksei Kelli ([email protected])
Kadri Ukrainski ([email protected])