Mykola Lazarev: «Our staff is becoming younger. It speaks about the perspective of radio biology in our university and in Ukraine»
The works by researchers of Radiobiology and Radiology Department are the most cited works in international scientometrics databases. It speaks about a high quality work of the team. We are talking with associate professor Mykola Lazarev.
– We are developing measures aiming at producing agricultural products with a minimum content of radionuclides. Our scientists have performed tests on the content of ferrocene in animal feed to reduce caesium in cows’ milk. When using these additives the content of radioactivity in milk decreases 5 times. This development is patented.
Our team has successfully been studying the effects of microbial agents on the reduction of radionuclides in plant products. Two Phd theses are prepared which consider this issue.
– What will you remember in 2016? What good have you noticed in our university, faculty and department?
– Our department has been a part of Faculty of Plant Protection, Biotechnology and Ecology. The university administration supports the department and radiological focus of researches while at other universities radiological researches are being reduced.
We have already some achievements. Our colleague Olena Pareniuk has worked in Japan for two years and now shares the obtained experience to students. We have trained Volodymyr Illenko to become a radiobiologist. There are two postgraduate students and two young colleagues at our department who joined us not long ago. It speaks about the perspective of this domain in our university and in Ukraine.
– Which researches are up-to-date?
– There is a rule in radiology. Radionuclides can be ignored if ten periods of their lives have passed. Taking into account that outside the exclusion zone the main radionuclides are 137Cs 90Sr with 30 years of dissolving, so it will take three hundred years till they disappear. Therefore, the main research areas are the search of activities, methods and technologies to reduce the intake of radionuclides in agricultural products and protection them from radiation effects.
– What lacks in academic and research process?
– We lack material resources New technologies and new possibilities to do experiments using new equipment. But our material resources leave much to be desired.
– Which of the young researchers would you like to note and why?
– I would like to note Volodymyr Illenko. He is hard-working persistent in doing researches, he is eager to make himself better, he has the ability to notice a big research problem in tiny things. And he has prepared his dissertation paper.
– What do you expect from 2017?
– As all Ukrainian I expect peace in my country. Two postgraduate students go to Norway to train after Christmas holidays. So 2017 is starting on a positive note.
Iryna Bilous