Simons Funds 11 Ukrainian Centers of Excellence at Up to $600,000 Each. The Budget Math Shows How Far Science Dollars Go in Wartime

A senior Ukrainian mathematician on a Simons Foundation Center of Excellence budget can be paid $700 a month. That is the base salary ceiling in the foundation's own budget example. A research scientist can be paid $500, and a student stipend runs up to $200. At those rates, a grant of $200,000 a year pays for five or six principal investigators, five to ten PhD research scientists, 10 to 15 students, an administrator, computing, travel and conferences. In the United States that money would cover roughly one mid-career lab.

That is the context for the announcement of November 3, 2026: the Simons Foundation and Simons Foundation International selected 11 Centers of Excellence across Ukraine for basic research in mathematics, physics, computation and theoretical biology. Each is eligible for up to $200,000 per year for three years, or $600,000 including indirect costs. A review-based extension can add two more years. The 2026 request for applications said the foundation planned to fund "eight to 10" centers. It funded 11.

The announcement does not give individual award amounts. If every center received the cap, the commitment would be $6.6 million over three years, and extensions could raise the five-year ceiling to about $11 million. That is our arithmetic, not a figure the foundation reported. Measured against what the money buys locally, it is one of the largest sustained private investments in Ukrainian basic science since the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

The 11 Centers and What They Study

Three patterns stand out.

The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine institutes did well. Five of the 11 winners are NAS of Ukraine research institutes, not universities. The RFA allowed either, as long as the applicant had verifiable nonprofit status in Ukraine and the center had its own operating and administrative structure. Academy institutes already had dedicated research staff and fewer teaching duties, which made them a natural fit for a model built around full research teams.

Kyiv dominates. Eight centers are in the capital, with one each in Lviv and Uzhhorod in the west. The RFA allowed centers in "any region of Ukraine," but none of the announced centers is in Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro or another eastern or southern city. The scientific base and the physical safety needed for a five-year program are concentrated in the center and west.

"Theory" was read broadly. The call funded "computational, data-driven and theoretical basic science as well as programs in mathematics," and allowed experimental work only "in exceptional cases," with up to $50,000 a year for equipment. Winners still include wheat root genomics and rhizosphere microbiomes (KOLOS), materials science and space physics. Applicants who framed experimental questions as computational ones were funded. One center, at the Kyiv School of Economics, is in quantum research, which suggests that host institution type mattered less than team quality.

How the Money Works

The RFA's budget example shows how a $200,000 year breaks down:

The FAQ caps indirect costs at 20 percent of direct costs. Equipment, tuition, and any part of a subcontract above $25,000 are excluded from that base. The foundation said "reasonable variations" on the structure were allowed, so funded budgets will differ.

These salaries are in addition to whatever the host institution already pays. That matters because Ukrainian research salaries have fallen sharply in real terms since 2022. The foundation's first Ukraine program, launched in January 2023, paid $200 a month to PhD researchers and $100 to doctoral students on top of salary. It funded 405 scientists at more than $1.2 million over 12 months and accepted every application it received. By June 2025 more than 430 grantees were drawing stipends.

The Centers of Excellence program marks a deliberate shift. The stipend program kept individual researchers working. The new program builds institutions: teams with a director, an administrator, a training pipeline and a five-year continuation plan. The RFA names "acquisition of major European grants during or after the five-year period" as "a good measure of success." The foundation is paying to make these groups competitive for Horizon Europe and European Research Council money. Ukraine participates in Horizon Europe as an associated country, so those programs are open to these groups, and the foundation does not plan to fund them indefinitely.

Why the Hub and Partnership Rules Matter Outside Ukraine

Two requirements in the RFA reach beyond the 11 winning institutions.

First, every center had to show how it would "benefit nearby institutions" and become "a hub of excellence." Each one is expected to run lectures, recruit students from neighboring universities and share computing. Ukrainian researchers who did not win can still benefit through the nearest center.

Second, the RFA asked for "scientific exchanges with those leading research institutions outside Ukraine." It called partnership plans "with concretely identified resources" "an important consideration." It also allowed up to two PIs per center to hold joint appointments at leading institutions abroad.

For researchers in the United States and Europe, this is the practical opening. The 11 centers are now funded, staffed and obligated to build international ties that reviewers will check at the three-year extension review. A partner who brings concrete resources helps the center's case for years four and five. Examples include a visiting position, compute allocation, a co-supervised student, a shared dataset or a joint workshop. Collaborations of this kind can also be written into the partner's own proposals:

• NSF: international collaboration supplements and the broader impacts of a research proposal. Check the current NSF guidance on foreign collaboration and research security before committing. NSF has tightened its rules on "foreign countries of concern," and Ukraine is not one of them.
• European funders: ERC and Marie Skłodowska-Curie mechanisms already encourage Ukrainian participation.
• Private funders: the Science and Innovation Fund for Ukraine, run by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences with support from the Simons Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, has raised more than $13 million since 2022. It funds workshops, fellowships, research grants and "glue funds" for this kind of connective work. In August 2026 it backed a separate Center of Excellence in Formal Methods and Verification at Ukrainian Catholic University.

"We wanted to support researchers where they are, and give them a means to stay in Ukraine," said David Spergel, the Simons Foundation's president, in the NAS release. Every design choice in the program reflects that aim: the stipends, the institutional base, the hub duty and the European-grant goal.

What to Do Now

If you are a Ukrainian researcher who did not apply or was not selected: the 2026 call is closed, and the foundation has not announced another round. The RFA's list of other opportunities includes no Ukraine-specific program. The nearest options are the hub activities of the 11 centers and the NAS Science and Innovation Fund. A team that applied and lost should treat its 15-page narrative as the first draft of a Horizon Europe or ERC Synergy proposal, since the foundation used the same standard.

If you are a U.S. or European PI in one of these fields: identify which of the 11 centers overlaps your work and contact its director with a specific offer. Generic goodwill does not help a center at review. A named student exchange, a shared code base or a joint summer school does. The foundation and NAS have co-hosted data science summer institutes in Lviv since 2023, a sign that convenings like these are valued.

If you run a foundation science program: the budget table above is a template. Spread across 11 teams, $6.6 million can keep entire research communities intact where local salaries are low. Few foundations publish their budget assumptions this openly, and the example makes it easier for co-funders to calculate what an added dollar buys.

The program is small next to the foundation's U.S. collaborations, such as its $80 million brain energetics effort announced the day before. Its significance lies in what it keeps intact: 11 research groups that would otherwise have lost people abroad.

For researchers building international partnerships into their next proposal, Granted can help find the U.S. and European funders whose rules reward that collaboration, and help draft the sections that make the case.