The Science Mentoring programme, supported by KSE Foundation, will help young biologists and chemists develop their own research projects.
The Da Vinci Ukraine programme by KSE Foundation and STEM Talent Fund helps Ukrainian school students deepen their knowledge of STEM disciplines, engage in scientific research, develop critical thinking and gain practical experience to participate in national and international Olympiads and competitions.
For the second consecutive year, KSE Foundation and STEM Talent Fund are supporting Science Mentoring, a year-long programme run by the youth organisation UkrTeenScience for students in grades 9–11 who are interested in biology and chemistry.
Throughout the year, participants work on their own research projects in various fields of biology and chemistry under the guidance of experienced mentors. They learn to work with scientific data, conduct research and present their findings in both Ukrainian and English.
The mentoring team brings together leading Ukrainian and international scientists from academia and the private sector, including professors from the US and Canada, as well as Ukrainian biotechnology specialists, including experts from Explogen.
This year, thanks to the support of Da Vinci Ukraine, more than 30 students from Lviv, Odesa, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, as well as two students from Germany and Romania, have joined the programme. Over the coming year, they will conduct research, carry out experiments, analyse scientific data and work towards new discoveries.
The achievements of last year’s participants demonstrate the programme’s impact: of the 35 students who took part in Science Mentoring, 74% won prizes at academic competitions and Olympiads.
Among them was Renata Mykhailova, who researched key transcriptional regulators associated with autism spectrum disorders and developed her own gene annotation tool. Her research won second place at the national stage of ISEF Ukraine, the official selection competition for the international Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), held annually in the United States.
Another programme participant, Sofiia Honcharova, expanded her research in the cytogenetics of amphipods using machine learning and a computational pipeline in ecotoxicology and cytogenetics. She won first place at both the regional and national stages of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Ukraine competition, as well as second place at ISEF Ukraine in the Animal Sciences category. This achievement earned her the opportunity to represent Ukraine at the international MOSTRATEC competition in Brazil in autumn 2026.
Through Da Vinci Ukraine, KSE Foundation helps turn students’ interest in science into independent research, practical experience and opportunities to engage with the academic community.