Oleksandr Martinenko y Marina Martinenko.
The Barcelona University welcomes Oleksandr Martinenko y Marina MartinenkoFrom Ukrainian medical professors. This Tuesday took place the presentation of the new teachers, coming from the University of Kharkivwho will join the university soon and who have been able to come to Spain thanks to their link with Xavier Pastor, professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the UB and head of Medical Informatics at the Hospital Clínic. He will work in the School of Medicine and she in the Economydepartments they visited and where they were able to learn regarding the teaching and research programs of which they will be part of in the coming months.
Oleksandr is Professor of Medicine and specialist in advanced biomedical data analysis, while Marina is a doctor, Professor of Economics and expert in reengineering. Oleksandr and Pastor met at the end of the 1990s because the coincidence made them both specialize in Medical Informatics. “We worked together on a European collaborative project in which we developed an Internet resource consisting of a medical field textbooksomething innovative because it was the first time that a resource of this type had been developed,” explains Pastor in a conversation with Medical Writing.
The two specialists in Medical Informatics have maintained contact ever since and they met once more in Brussels in 2010when Pastor was coordinator of a digital health meeting in Europe taking advantage of the fact that Spain held the presidency of the Council of the European Union and was able to invite Oleksandr.
How was the arrival of the Martinenko conceived?
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, the Martinenko couple stayed at their home in Kharkov with their daughter Anastasia. Until March 8 they remained in their home along with Marina’s parents (Viktor and Nadia Lisitsia), who moved because their apartment, located on the 15th floor, was considered more vulnerable than their daughter’s, on the 3rd. Until then, Pastor relates that the family “did not believe that a war might startuntil the day before they lived a normal life and it was sudden to wake up at dawn with the noise of the bombings”.
Oleksandr’s in-laws tried to go back to their flat to get more clothes, since they had just enough for a few days, but their journey was interrupted when the bombing resumed. “I contacted Oleksandr just when I learned that the Russian army had attacked Kharkov, where he lived, and I raised with him the option through the UB Solidarity Foundation“. This initiative consists of host research teaching staff that he must leave the Ukrainian universities to take refuge from the consequences of the Russian invasion.
The Martinenkos began an odyssey to cross the country, enter Poland through Krakovets and reach Krakow, where they took a direct flight that allowed them to reach Barcelona last Saturday. In the first place, that journey it would not have been possible for Oleksandr if he was not 61 years old, since until the age of 60 men are prohibited from leaving the country. Pastor has taken the necessary steps to help his friends leave the Ukraine so that they can continue their research work at the UB together with the vice-rector, Ernest Abadal.
“I saw that the resume of Oleksandr fit in with my department and their work is totally in line with what we do. Later I also asked him to send me his wife’s CV and her profile also fits into a unit of the Faculty of Economics“, details Pastor. On their way to the Krakow airport, the Martinenkos had to sleep on the floor of a corridor, they had problems in the control, they passed six hours at night waiting at 10 degrees below zero and they even had a little car accident because of the snow.
Oleksandr joins the Department of Surgery and Medical-Surgical Specialties of the Clinic Campus, and the Navy to the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics, with application in medical processes. Despite the happy ending to this story, Pastor remarks that the Martinenkos “they made a tough decision because it is very difficult to leave your house and not know when you will return and what you will find”.
Doctor and doctor Martinenko have become the first two teaching-researchers to benefit from the program of the Fundació Solidaritat of the UB, which offers a work contract until December 31, which might be revised depending on the evolution of the situation in Ukraine. Pastor points out that both speak english and frenchamong other languages, so they will have no problem adapting.
The rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdiahas stated that “we are very happy because soon we will be able to count on two researchers from Ukraine. We will welcome you with open arms and full of peace.“. The UB is managing the procedures to incorporate three more researchers from Ukraine and is also collaborating in the task of redirect the requests it receiveswhich do not fit into your center, but may fit into programs at other universities.
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