Finalists of the UKRAINET PhD Thesis Presentation Contest 2025 and the Board Members of the German-Ukranian Academic Society. Left to right: Prof. Dr. Matthias Epple, Prof. Dr. Olga Garaschuk, Sofia Kovalchuk (1st place), Ruslana Koziienko (2nd place), Oleksii Chyzhyk (finalist), Svitlana Stupak (finalist), Nadiia Skobel (finalist), Nataliya Butych, Anatoliy Gyrych (Nomad Bioscience), Dr. Anna Grebinnyk. Bayreuth, 01 October 2025 (Copyright: Chair for Metals and Alloys, University of Bayreuth).
The final of this years’ UKRAINET PhD Thesis Presentation Contest took place in Bayreuth on 1 October 2025 at the Days of Ukraine in Bavaria. During this competition six talented scholars presented their research, and the jury selected the following the winners:
- The first prize was awarded to Sofia Kovalchuk, Department of Internal Medicine I, Hematology, Oncology, and Stem Cell Transplantation at the University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany for presenting her PhD research titled “Targeted inhibition of activated neutrophil transmigration ameliorates the myeloproliferative neoplasm phenotype in mice”
- The second prize was shared by
- Ruslana Koziienko from the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University (CEU), Vienna, Austria, who presented her PhD research entitled “The Effects and Affects of the (Im)Mobility of Men During Russia’s Full-Scale War against Ukraine”
- Daria Nepochatova from the Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages, University of Oxford, UK, who presented her PhD research entitled “Ukrainian Women’s Almanacs as Nineteenth-Century Feminist Literature”.
The winners received monetary prizes of 300 EUR (the first prize) and 200 EUR (the second prize) as well as valuable book presents.
This PhD Contest is organised by the German-Ukrainian Academic Society (DUAG)/ The UKRAINE Network. Since its first round in 2016 it has been sponsored by Nomad Bioscience GmbH, a leading developer of innovative antibacterial and antiviral biologics for medicine markets with unmet needs, and supported the Embassy of Ukraine in Germany.