Webinar highlights eduGAIN – Ukraine’s key to digital research and education services

Ukraine’s Research and Education (R&E) sector has gained access to vital services and resources through the eduGAIN service, which has been recently been provided in Ukraine by URAN, the Ukrainian Research and Academic Network Association, with support from EU4Digital through the EU-funded EaPConnect project.

More than 200 members of the Ukrainian R&E community learned in a recent URAN webinar how eduGAIN simplifies access and enables greater possibilities for participation in international collaborations. Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University is the first in Ukraine to use eduGAIN, opening new opportunities for its students.

URAN held the webinar on 26 May to bring its user community up to date on eduGAIN, which is a keystone service that enables use of a wide range of other vital services and resources.

“Ukraine has signed an Association Agreement with the European Union, and one condition of this is the integration of science and education in Ukraine into the European system. The pan-European GÉANT Association is recognised by the European Commission as a provider of IT services for education and science and it has a large number of services. eduGAIN was designed to ensure that all participating federations play by the same rules and that services are provided according to uniform standards, in one language, to avoid any misunderstandings in terms of service provision or security of personal data transfer from one operator to another,” explained Yevhenii Preobrazhenskyi, URAN Executive Director.

What is eduGAIN?

The expansion of international cooperation between universities and research centres, and the increasing use of  services for e-learning, data exchange and library access, led to a need for a shared pool of online services and resources to be made accessible through an integrated, federated system. eduGAIN allows users to simply and securely access the services available using a single account that is provided by their R&E ‘home institution’. Today, eduGAIN interconnects 72 national research and education identity federations, more than 4,000 institutions and more than 3,000 services.

A key to yet more services

eduGAIN has become an important building block in several other GÉANT services for research and education. eduTEAMS enables the creation and management of virtual teams and the secure access and sharing of common resources. InAcademia allows students and staff from participating institutions to access or buy online services and products while protecting their privacy. MyAcademicID gives students who participate in international mobility programmes the ability to access Erasmus+ online tools and services. 

Yevhenii Preobrazhenskyi added that Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University is the first in Ukraine to use eduGAIN in an identification system. Its students can log in through eduGAIN to MyAcademicID, which allows them to use Erasmus+ applications and will ultimately enable their participation in a European Union electronic student identity card scheme.

The EU4Digital: Connecting Research and Education Communities project (EaPConnect) aims to bring together research and education communities from EU and Eastern partner countries and to reduce the digital divide. The project will extend network infrastructure to scale up scientific exchange across borders, offer new services to enhance international R&E cooperation, strengthen national research and education networks (NRENs) in R&E ecosystems, and build knowledge, skills and collaborative working through events, training, and other initiatives.

Press release