On April 30, 2025, the Ivano-Frankivsk National Medical University hosted the 4th Scientific and Practical Conference with international participation, titled “Advancing Best Practices in PhD Training,” dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the university’s founding.
The conference focused on pressing issues related to doctoral training under the academic and research program 222 “Medicine,” including the openness and relevance of scientific profiles, challenges in selecting dissertation topics, the integration of artificial intelligence into the educational process and research, the development of open science, and involvement in grant-based activities.
Special attention was given to aligning educational processes with the standards of the European Higher Education Area and to the development of interdisciplinary competencies among doctoral candidates. IFNMU is actively implementing effective mentorship models aimed at supporting the professional development of early-career researchers.
Also during the conference, Volodymyr Kotsiubynskyi, Head of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science, presented current practices for implementing open science principles in the university’s research activities. In his presentation, he outlined key achievements of the Advanced Materials Open Science Centre (PNU-OpenLab), established as part of the HORIZON-INFRA-2023-EOSC-01-01 project (2024–2026).
The focus was placed on the management of open research data, in particular the creation of the institutional repository DataSet (https://dataset.pnu.edu.ua/), which operates on the InvenioRDM platform. The presentation demonstrated how the synergy of open technologies, advanced digital infrastructure, and the university’s strategic vision contributes to the advancement of open science at both the local and national levels.
As part of the conference, Volodymyra Boichuk, Professor of the Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science at Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University, presented at Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University presented the international SpaceReady project (Erasmus+ KA220-HED – Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education). This project is a result of successful collaboration between PNU and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow (Poland), the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France), the Poliarte Academy of Art and Design (Italy), and CreateHub (Poland). The main objective of the project is to develop a digital training course that combines a unified methodology with an interdisciplinary curriculum for preparing participants in analog space missions.
