GMAF-Ukraine
The Global MIT At-Risk Fellows (GMAF) Program is designed to enhance the educational and research experiences of international university faculty and researchers by introducing them to MIT campus methods and strategies in their areas of specialty. The GMAF-Ukraine pilot program focuses on Ukrainian scholars with current or recent affiliations at Ukrainian universities or the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. The applicants may currently be residing in Ukraine (with eligibility to leave the country) or be living outside the country since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The application process for the Spring 2025 semester is now closed.
Fellowship
Fellows selected by the GMAF-Ukraine faculty committee will spend a semester at MIT. Each fellow will be paired with an MIT faculty advisor in their field and have an opportunity observe research work and classes taught by their advisor or another MIT faculty member. Fellows will also be invited to attend lab meetings and on-campus programming that may be of interest to them in their area of specialty and beyond. MIT covers expenses associated with the GMAF fellowship, including travel, accommodations, visas, health insurance, instructional materials, as well as a general living stipend.
GMAF-Ukraine welcomes applications from all qualified faculty and researchers who are:
- Holders of academic or research appointments (or had been prior to February 2022) at a Ukrainian university or the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
- Interested in and committed to bringing their scholarship to bear on Ukraine’s current challenges
- Holders of a PhD (or equivalent degree) in a field that is also represented at MIT
- Ukrainian citizens
GMAF-Ukraine will give priority to applicants from the following fields, which are relevant for Ukraine’s pressing needs and have strong representation within MIT:
- Economic development
- Housing and urban planning
- Energy, advanced materials, and infrastructure (especially nuclear and sustainable forms of energy)
- Computer science (especially in the areas of digital transformation, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence)
- Prosthetics engineering
- Logistics
Application is not limited to these fields, and scholars from other fields are also welcome to apply, so long as their fields are represented at MIT.
All applications must be written by the candidates themselves. No applications from ChatGPT or other artificial machine learning source will be acceptable. Semi-finalists will also be requested to upload a 1-minute video explaining their research and teaching interests. At the final stage, the GMAF-Ukraine faculty committee will hold half-hour interviews with the finalist candidates.
The application process for AY2024-2025 is now closed.
News
Please help us welcome three new GMAF-Ukraine fellows - Tetiana Zakharchenko, Oleksandr Hrytsyna and Volodymyr Tkach - on MIT campus in spring 2025!
Tetiana Zakharchenko is the Director of the Computer Science Program at the Ukrainian Catholic University. For the past few years, she’s been a research fellow at the Center for Responsible AI at the New York University, working on projects that focus on making AI fairer and more ethical. Dr. Zakharchenko is committed to helping Ukrainian students and teachers overcome the challenges caused by the war and COVID-19 and to bring hope and new possibilities to education in Ukraine. While at MIT, she will be affiliated with the Media Lab, working under the auspices of Prof. Cynthia Breazeal and collaborating with the Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education Initiative.
Oleksandr Hrytsyna is a multidisciplinary scientist whose research and activities are focused on achieving climate-neutral and smart cities, in particular, studying the interaction between human, ecological and technological components of the urban environment. Dr. Hrytsyna believes wastewater energy has a significant potential and that utilization of wastewater energy could be an important step on the way to decarbonization. At MIT, Dr. Hrytsyna is joining the D-Lab to advance his research and co-teach three D-Lab courses with Susan Murcott: Thermal Energy Networks for Rapid, Cost-Effective Campus Decarbonization; Water, Sanitation, & Hygiene (WASH); and Climate Change & Planetary Health. He will also participate in MIT initiatives focused on decarbonization and climate neutrality.
Volodymyr Tkach is an AI and cybersecurity expert specializing in anomaly detection and threat intelligence. He led the development of an advanced intrusion detection system for the National Bank of Ukraine and co-authored multiple scholarly publications. In his work on the NPAD (Non-Pattern-based Anomaly Detection) approach, he has studied the possibilities of anomaly detection assuming no information about the normal behavior of any system. His work bridges AI, cybersecurity, and financial security, driving innovation in both academia and industry. At MIT, Dr. Tkach will be affiliated with the CSAIL to work with Prof. Una-May O’Riley on adversarial AI and its implications for cybersecurity, while continuing his own research on anomaly detection.
