Education quality progress in Ukrainian HEIs is limited by lack of a strong academic integrity culture, which is required for sustainable positive change. Growing such a culture is a complex time consuming task, however we believe it can be effectively approached with appropriate processes and instruments. Academic integrity is based on openness and transparency principles, i.e. acting visibly, understandably and predictably promoting participation and accountability. At the same time Open Science, an international movement aimed at supporting better quality science, is based on the same values and is offering a variety of approaches and mechanisms able to grow change. That is why we trust that adopting and promoting Open Science practices and transparency will lead to academic integrity improvement and, in turn, rise of education quality in the target HEIs. The OS roadmap is diverse. However, introducing Open Peer Review (OPR) has the biggest potential in Ukraine as it brings transparency to the already familiar practice of academic evaluation and provides hands-on learning opportunities for early career researchers (ECRs), helping to build new skills under collective mentorship of international experts. Hence, we plan to develop and implement an online OPR platform for academic conferences (as they provide additional face-to-face promotion opportunities, journals don’t) and build an international virtual community of peer reviewers and researchers on the base of it. Combined with general and subject-specific OS subjects to be introduced in the partner HEIs for Master students and PhD candidates as well as open online course for everyone, our OPR service is intended to give our target universities (and Ukrainian HE system in general) a much needed impetus for change towards openness and integrity. Hence, we consider open practices as a QA process and its technological backbone (the OPR platform and virtual community of experts-reviewers) as a QA mechanism.

The need for fully integrated cryogenic instruments 1) measuring physical quantities with ultimate sensitivity, up to the quantum limit; 2) processing the data at high clock speed up to several tens of GHz and; 3) delivering pre-processed data at high throughputs of several Gbits/second per channel to off-the-shelf equipment is felt in several domains: for the quest of knowledge associated to big science, like astrophysics or particle physics, for the development of quantum cryptographic front-ends to secure data and interfacing quantum bit systems, for processing digital signals on microwave frequency carriers, for imaging the brain or heart for medicine, as just a few examples. Often each task is achieved separately in a customized way for niche applications. This is an obstacle to the dissemination of instruments that are necessary, for example, for future imagers with very high performances. Besides, dedicated solutions do not enable incremental progress towards systems that can be easily re-used for other applications. Here we propose a novel interdisciplinary path with breakthrough technological solutions based on superconducting devices to provide end-users from different domains with an enabling cryogenic digital platform. This solution embeds nanoscale energy efficient superconducting digital processing circuits and sensors with superconducting high throughput amplifiers. To our knowledge this has never been done so far. To validate the proof-of-concept and enable faster future transfer of technology four companies are involved in the development and integration of technological modules and to prepare future exploitation. At the basic science level, this approach may allow developing at a larger scale nanoscale superconducting devices for further high-density integration of complex imagers and digital processing systems for future metrological, telecommunication, supercomputing and quantum computer applications. To achieve these objectives we decided, with a consortium based on 14 partners to apply to the FET-OPEN call. Our project submitted in January 2017 passed all thresholds but did not get funding given its global mark in a very competitve call with success rate of about 7%. We have an encouraging Evaluation Summary Report and we can improve our proposal to submit it again for the upcoming FET-OPEN call of May 2018. To achieve that objective we need to meet and discuss in more details our scientific and technological plans, the organisation of the work to upgrade our proposal and its FET-OPEN application document. We also need external advice regarding the planned activities and the polishing of the document of the H2020 application with some company specialized in that activity. Consequently the MRSEI call of the ANR is the adequate call to upgrade our proposal and reinforce the planned activities in the European framework.