STCU: Working 15 Years for a Better and Safer World

06 Dec 2010 - 31 Dec 2010

On 17 November 2010, the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine (STCU) held its 15 Year Anniversary Celebration on the campus of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (Kyiv, Ukraine). Over 200 people joined in this celebration, including the Canadian, EU Delegation, and U.S. Ambassadors; and senior government officials from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova; and other as well as ambassadors and other senior government officials from the Sweden, Norway, the United States, the European Commission, France, Canada, and Japan.

STCU was also pleased to have three of its four Executive Directors participate and give speeches, as well as to have many leading S&T institute directors, scientists, and current and former STCU Secretariat staff join in the festivities.

Please follow the link to see the STCU 15th Anniversary pictures gallery:

STCU: Working 15 Years for a Better and Safer World

15 Year Anniversary

About STCU: The STCU was the first intergovernmental organization in Ukraine and was established by an Agreement signed on 25 October 1993, by the four Founding Parties: Canada, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States of America. The Agreement came into force on 4 May 1994, when Ukrainian President Kravchuk issued a decree accepting the STCU Agreement.

The STCU became fully operational when it stood up its technical Secretariat and held its first Governing Board Meeting on 14-15 December 1995. It is on the occasion of this first Governing Board Meeting that STCU celebrates 15 years of working toward a better and safer world.

Later, the European Union acceded to the STCU Agreement in November 1998, replacing Sweden as a Governing Party to the STCU Agreement. Over the years, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Uzbekistan joined STCU as member parties. Today, the STCU is headquartered in Kyiv and has field offices in Baku, Chisinau, and Tbilisi as well as in Kharkiv and Lviv. Japan has also participated as a special sponsor of STCU projects.

The STCU was created to deter the spread of weapons-of-mass-destruction knowledge by assisting former WMD experts in their transition to self-supporting, peaceful activities in the international science and business communities. The STCU does this by implementing the nonproliferation policies of its Parties, in order to:
• Facilitating research opportunities for former weapons-of-mass-destruction scientists that permanently redirects their talents to peaceful aims,
• Assisting the protection and exploitation of research results attained to benefit the scientists creating them and the economies and societies of the Parties governing the Center,
• Supporting the integration of the scientists into credible international, national and regional research efforts in the global scientific and business communities.

Since the first STCU Governing Board meeting in 1995, STCU has sponsored over 1,400 cooperative science research projects amounting to over $200 million (USD) in research grant funding to Ukrainian, Azeri, Georgian, Moldovan, and Uzbek scientists. STCU has engaged nearly 18,000 scientists, of which approximately 10,000 were former weapon scientists during the Soviet era.