On June 5, World Environment Day, Lake Baikal Foundation jointly with the Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) held a webinar on the «Baikal Initiative» grant competition for young scientists interested in researching Lake Baikal.
Anastasia Tsvetkova, the Director of the Foundation, shared with more than 80 participants of the webinar that the Foundation seeks to contribute to the solution of modern problems of Russian science by initiating this grant competition and thereby supporting young scientists and popularizing scientific knowledge among the population for the fourth year in a row. Also, the audience got acquainted in detail with 3 nominations of the competition this year, with the conditions for participation, as well as with the criteria and assessment methodology.
As examples of projects that received grant support from the Foundation, winners of the past-years competition were invited to speak at a webinar. These are Ph.D. Igor Moroldoev, leader of the 2018 winning project «Conservation of the Olkhon Vole», and Ph.D. Natalya Luzhkova, leader of the 2017 winning project «Along the Doppelmayer’s trail: protecting the nature of Barguzinsky nature reserve for over 100 years». The speakers shared their experience of participating in the «Baikal Initiative» grant competition: first of all, why this competition was attractive for them, the rationale to develop this particular project, and, of course, presented a lot of interesting details about the projects themselves, about the research results and what grant funds were spent on.
The audience showed high interest and actively asked questions regarding both the contest itself with the opportunities for participation, and the winning projects presented and their implementation. The speakers were glad to answer all the questions and thanked the audience for their active participation.
You can view the webinar recording and download materials on the ASI platform.