NOTES ON PEOPLE (05/21/00)

NOTES ON PEOPLE

Elected to Ukraine's Academy of Sciences

KYIV - Dr. George Gamota was elected a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine on April 7. Dr. Gamota is currently the In-Country Manager of the USAID-supported Business Incubator Development (BID) Program in Ukraine managed by Loyola College of Baltimore. He was recognized for his pioneering scientific work as a scientist at the University of Michigan and Bell Laboratories, as well for his continuing support of scientists in Ukraine since independence in 1991.

As a member of the Emergency Task Force of the American Physical Society (APS), Dr. Gamota managed, with the help of the Ukrainian Physical Society, the APS small grants program that supported 875 young scientists in 1992-1993. He further helped Ukrainian scientific organizations acquire technical journals and other information from the West and started summer school programs in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv. He brought a number of American scientists to Ukraine that resulted in many new opportunities for Ukrainian scientists to partner with their American counterparts. For his work with young scientists and other efforts, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Ukrainian Physical Society, an honor that has been bestowed to only four physicists. He is also a long-standing member of the Ukrainian Engineers' Society of America.

In 1995 he proposed to the USAID the establishment of a technology business incubator program to help support scientists interested in starting their own small businesses. He successfully competed for a grant to begin that work in 1997. Currently, two technology incubators are operating in Ukraine: in Kyiv (The Center of Innovation Development, a subsidiary of the International Institute of Management) and in Kharkiv (The Center of Kharkiv Technologies, a subsidiary of the Institute of Single Crystals). Together they have served over 600 small companies.

He also was a managing partner of the just completed Marketing Assistance Program (MAP) in Kharkiv where over 2000 persons received training in marketing and business skill development. To further expand the development of business skills for scientists, Dr. Gamota will begin a Distance Learning (DL) program this summer that will help electronically link 10 cities in Ukraine and incorporate new DL teaching technologies throughout Ukraine. This program is supported by the U.S. State Department and will be managed by Loyola College.

Dr. Gamota's career began at the University of Michigan, where he obtained his Ph.D. in physics. He also held senior positions in the U.S. government, as director of research at the Pentagon, professor of physics and director of the University of Michigan's Institute of Science and Technology, president of Thermo Electron Technologies Corporation, and director of the MITRE Institute. He is currently president of a small technical consulting firm, Science and Technology Management Associates and associate director of the International Technology Research Institute of Loyola College. He is the author or co-author of over 80 technical articles, four books and a comprehensive 5-volume report titled "Science, Technology and Conversion in Ukraine."

Dr. Gamota was born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1939 and emigrated to the United States in 1949. He is married to the former Christina Dawydowycz, and has three sons, two of whom have worked in Ukraine for a number of years in various capacities after completing their studies in the United States.

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