Second Year of Altarum/Nansen University Fellowship Program a Success

The second academic year (2001/2002) of the Altarum/Nansen University Fellowship Program (UFP) came to an official conclusion with the three UFP Student Fellows (two master's students and one second-year Ph.D. candidate) successfully defending their work before the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv. A week earlier at a ULRMC-hosted seminar, the three UFP Student Fellows presented the results of their studies undertaken with ULRMC technical support concerning the application of remote sensing, GIS and other information technologies. In attendance at the ULRMC seminar were ULRMC managers and instructors, professors of National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, representatives of the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources of Ukraine and of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and two representatives from the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF).

The UFP in Ukraine was initiated in 1999 with funds donated by individual ERIM employees and is administrated jointly by the Ukrainian Land and Resource Management Center (ULRMC) and the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv.

UFP's pioneer Student Fellow, Ludmila Bilous, successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation completed with ULRMC technical assistance during the 2000/2001 academic year.

To complement the Altarum and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID-Kyiv) funds that have supported the UFP in the first two academic years, Altarum has been successful in securing a commitment from CRDF to provide funding for the 2002/2003 academic year, permitting ULRMC to choose up to 10 UFP Student Fellows to be selected on a competitive basis.