Ukraine has joined the EGI Council as an Associated Participant after a fruitful collaboration going back for many years.

The Ukrainian National Grid (UNG) is an e-infrastructure set up to share and manage the resources of 26 Ukrainian institutes and universities. The UNG has 14 clusters fully integrated in the EGI Federation since June 2012. The Ukrainian resources are available to researchers through 9 Virtual Organisations (VOs):

• CMS and ALICE – High-energy physics
• MolDynGrid – Molecular biology;
• Medgrid – Medical grid-system for research in the field of cardiology;
• SysBio – Reconstruction of gene regulation networks;
• MatModEn – Mathematical modeling in energy problems;
• CompuChemGridUA — Quantum chemistry;
• Мultiscale – Solution of a wide range of scientific and applied problems;
• GEOPARD – Calculation of three-dimensional seismic full-wave models in a grid environment;
• VIRGO.UA – Cosmology and astrophysics.

Ukraine and EGI

The “Digital Agenda for Ukraine 2020” sets up a vision to develop a modern digital infrastructure for research in Ukraine to reduce the technological gap, to establish the use of data-driven science innovation alongside the European Union and the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

The EGI Federation, with its commitment to provide services for research and innovation, is an obvious partner for this ambitious goal. So last year Anatoly Zagorodny, Director at Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vice-president at National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and Yannick Legré, managing director of the EGI Foundation, started the discussion on membership options for Ukraine. Ukraine became as Associated Participant, represented by the Bogolyubov Institute in 2018.

The benefits of joining the EGI Council include:

• Services: Being able to offer sustainable digital services for users – both scientists and industry/SMEs;
• Projects: More possibilities of collaboration between researchers and industry from Ukraine and EU through joint projects;
• EOSC: Technological and resource support for Ukraine’s participation in EOSC and the possibility of implementing a pilot project for the creation of the National EOSC Hub in Ukraine.