"Science for Ukraine" participants from two specialized Ukrainian high schools for gifted students pictured at the Advanced Science Research Center at CCNY.
Summer school at The City College of New York for 36 outstanding students from two of war-torn Ukraine’s top specialized high schools for physics and mathematics began with a 12-hour bus ride from the capital Kyiv to the Polish border on the west. It would take another six hours to get to Warsaw, Poland’s main city, from where the weary travelers caught a 10-hour flight to JFK.
Conflict has a way of complicating the simplest of things in life.
Until Aug. 12, however, normalcy returns to the lives of these young, gifted minds from the Kyiv’s Ukrainian Physics and Mathematics Lyceum (UPML) and the Kharkiv Physics and Mathematics Lyceum (KPML) No. 27, as they participate in a three-week research camp at The City College.
Dubbed “Science For Ukraine,” it’s the brainchild of CCNY Grove School of Engineering Professor Alexander Khanikaev, a pioneer of topological photonics and one of the world’s Highly Cited Researchers (HCR). Originally from South Ossetia, another war-torn region in the former Soviet Union, Khanikaev heard about the predicament of UPML’s talented students when approached to help raise funds for bomb shelters there.
“This school is really famous and is comparable to that of the Bronx High School of Science in terms of its contribution to training outstanding scientists in the former Soviet Union, and in the post-Soviet times,” he said.
“In some respect this school has the same mission as CCNY in uplifting students from poverty by creating opportunities for them in various fields including STEM,” Khanikaev added. “I thought that it would be great to organize a summer school for these students so that they could escape the reality, at least for a short period of time, and reinforce their interest in the sciences.”
Khanikaev’s initiative is supported by the Simons Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, who co-founded the summers school, as well as by The City College and the Graduate Center, CUNY.
The outcome thus far is a cohort of some of Ukraine’s best and brightest high schoolers engaged in research -- ranging from photonics to creating materials for nanotechnology -- with world class scientists and researchers at CCNY and the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), a branch of the CUNY Graduate Center on the CCNY campus.
In addition to Khanikaev and his state-of-the photonics lab, other mentors include Andrea Alù, Einstein Professor of Physics at the Graduate Center, CUNY, with affiliation to CCNY, and a reputation as an internationally renowned metamaterials expert.
The young visitors, mostly eighth and ninth graders, are grabbing the opportunity with open arms.
Fourteen-year-old Zakhar Cherniak, a ninth grader at UPML, is nurturing his interest in metamaterials and nanostructures under Alù’s tutelage. As well as returning to the US for college – possibly at The City College. “Why not? After this trip, I’ll have lots of contacts at CCNY,” he said.
Sofia Siedlovska and Daria Ruban, ninth grade classmates at KMPL and both chemistry enthusiasts, are awed by their project in the lab of Maria Tamargo, a member of the National Academy of Engineering hailed for her contributions to molecular-beam epitaxy of semiconductor materials.
“We are working with the Professor on creating materials for nanotechnology. It’s really interesting research that will continue without us when we leave,” said Siedlovska. The 14-year-old aspires to be a surgeon who could, in the future, apply nanotechnology to her work.
Both Siedlovska and Ruban have also been inspired by their early research to return states-side for college.
Primary sponsors of the “Science For Ukraine” summer camp at CCNY include the Simons Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.
Click here for a list of all participating faculty and labs.
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Jay Mwamba
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