Karazin University is a member of the Horizon Europe program within the EUROfusion project

In December 2022, the university received additional funds to pay for Karazin University's participation in the EUROfusion project, which is part of the Horizon Europe Program.

Implementation of the European roadmap for controlled fusion research (the EUROfusion project) continues under the new cycle of the Euratom Research and Training Program (2021-2025), which is complementary to the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Program (2021-2027). Both under the previous Horizon 2020 Program and under the new Horizon Europe, the EUROfusion project is one of the most ambitious projects of the European Union Program and the largest both in terms of the number of participants (28 beneficiaries and 150 affiliated parties) and the amount of funding (a little more than 1 billion euros, 55% of which is the contribution of the European Union, the rest is the contribution of the project participants).

Ukraine has been participating in the EUROfusion project since 2017 under the Horizon 2020 Program and continues to be part of the consortium under the new Program. The new Association Agreement of Ukraine to the Horizon Europe Program (2021–2027) and the Euratom Program (2021–2025) was signed in the summer of 2022. After that, the formal conditions for the entry of the Ukrainian research unit into the EUROfusion consortium appeared.

From September 2022, 5 more participants from Ukraine joined the EUROfusion consortium - affiliates of the Kharkiv Physical and Technical Institute National Research Center, which is the beneficiary and the leading organization of the Ukrainian branch. The EUROfusion grant agreement has a clause on retrospective participation in the project. That is, despite the formal deadline for joining the consortium — September 2022, in fact all Ukrainian organizations have been participating in the project since January 1, 2021.

The main focus of EUROfusion Horizon Europe research is new knowledge and innovation aimed at the future operation of the ITER research reactor and the design of the DEMO pilot thermonuclear power plant. The Ukrainian research unit of the EUROfusion consortium participates in research for 9 of the 26 work packages of the project, performing theoretical and experimental work on tokamaks and stellarators, developing new materials and detectors, methods of heating high-temperature plasma and its diagnostics, preparing future generations of scientists, engineers and thermonuclear reactor operators.

Karazin University is one of the participants of the Ukrainian research link of the EUROfusion consortium, which is involved in theoretical research in the field of plasma physics and the training of the next generations of scientists and engineers.

Thanks to its scientists, Ukraine makes its own intellectual contribution to the European strategy of zero CO2 emissions and the achievement of the European goal of building the first European thermonuclear power plant and transferring thermonuclear electricity to the power grid in the early 2050s.