Ukraine

Ukraine has traditionally high S&T potential which is still maintained at quite a high level even in spite of hard conditions during the transition period of the Ukraine economy. A number of directions of Ukrainian S&T, in particular mathematics, theoretical physics etc are at a world-class level. There are a lot of highly qualified scientists and specialists that work in the ICT sphere; in 2002, Ukrainian IT professionals were given 4^th place in the list of the world’s most qualified IT specialists (Global Skills Report, 2002-2006). The rapidly growing ICT sphere is admitted to be of utmost importance for economy upturn. In this context, the most careful attention shall be given to the improvement of R&D in the ICT domain and assistance to the participation of Ukrainian scientists in European collaboration scientific projects.

Certain appropriate steps have been taken in public policy: The National Program “E-Ukraine” for 2005-2012 was developed in 2004; the Law “On Main Principles of Information Society Development in Ukraine for 2007-2015” was passed in 2007.

In 2006, on the basis of the EC directive for the Member States to create independent ICT-regulatory bodies, the National Commission on Communication Regulation Issues was established which is a subordinate of the President and directed and coordinated by the Cabinet of Ministry.

The development of R&D in the ICT sphere is under the responsibility of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the Ministry of Education and Science that has 14 R&D organisations engaged in basic and applied research in the ICT domain. Among these organisations, there are such famous scientific schools as V.M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics, the Space Research Institute, the Institute of Mathematical Machines and Systems, the International Scientific Research Centre of Software Technology “Technosoft”, etc.

The main directions of scientific research are the following: software for parallel architectures and creation of supercomputers, development of computer intellectual systems (artificial intellect), automation of programming, information security, medical information science, geo-information space research for society, etc. These directions are supported, in particular, by the following national science and research programs in the ICT sphere in Ukraine:

- “New national intellectual systems”,

- “System analysis, methods and means of control for processes of different natures; methods of optimisation, software and IT in complex systems”,

- “Telecommunication systems and information resources”.

Professional interests of Ukrainian researchers include research in the computer sciences fields such as semantic web, theory of frames, recursive functions, machine of abstract states, functional programming, technologies of distributed calculations that provide parallel and idle calculations, distributed databases within development of GRID-concept, etc.

More than 3000 companies have been working in ICT business.