Since December 2011 IIMCB participates in the COMBIOM project titled „Strengthening Cooperation in Molecular Biomedicine between EU and Ukraine”, supported by FP7 under activity Integrating Europe's neighbours into the ERA (ERA-WIDE). IIMCB role is to support Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics (IMBG, www.imbg.org.ua) in Kiev, Ukraine by twinning with Ukrainian researchers (M. Bochtler, J. Jaworski, M. Miaczynska), trainings for IMBG researchers and administration staff as well as development of IMBG Biomed Research Strategy (J. Kuznicki, A. Zylicz). COMBIOM is an outcome of a long lasting supportive collaboration of IIMCB with IMBG.
Project information can be found at: http://www.combiom-fp7.org

IIMCB and IMBG representatives have been meeting regularly during Polish-Ukrainian Parnas conferences. As a satellite event of the kick-off of the HEALTH-PROT meeting and the meeting of the International Advisory Board, IIMCB organised a Polish-Ukrainian conference. We invited more than 20 scientists and scientific managers from IMBG to share with them our experiences from participating in EU programmes. The IMBG director, Prof. Elskaya, participated in the IIMCB International Advisory Board meeting, and the IMBG managers had meetings with their IIMCB counterparts. Closer bilateral relationships between IIMCB and IMBG were established when the IIMCB director, Prof. Jacek Kuznicki, presented a lecture entitled, “Research organisation in the 21st century: experience and achievements of IIMCB,” at the Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science. IIMCB’s experience was then proposed to be used by Ukrainian scientific institutions. One of the results of this cooperation is a project that began in December 2011 “Strengthening cooperation in molecular biomedicine between the EU and Ukraine”; COMBIOM; FP7-INCO-2011-6, ERA-WIDE. Another outcome was an invitation from the Ukraine State Agency for Science, Innovation and Information of Prof. Jacek Kuznicki to participate in the works of International Expert Council responsible for ranking grant applications from Ukrainian scientists. Prof. Kuznicki was one of 11 members of the Council, next to Dr. Erwin Neher from Germany (Nobel Prize Laureate) and Dr. Alan North and Dr. Ole H. Petersen from the UK.