Postcard from Bishkek

Last week, a post on the Kloop website looked at Kyrgyz contributions to science.

It was in Russian, so here’s a brief summary:

Since it was established some 60 years ago, members of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences have played their part in scientific discover.  Most of these occurred during the Soviet period when funding was made available from the central government in Moscow, but since Independence in 1991, although the institution continues to work, the possibilities for making advances and discoveries have been more limited.  According to the Vice President of the Academy, they are allocated a meager (my word – not his, nor Kloop’s) USD60,000 a year.

The article highlighted five major contributions to science made by members of the Academy, and appealed for information about others that readers might be aware of.

The five they chose were:

One of the main areas of research undertaken in the Academy was into livestock husbandry – a vital element of the Kyrgyz economy, (and last year I wrote a brief postcard on Kyrgyz Biological sciences).  Following the Second World War and up until the late 1960′s, (between 1947 and 1966 according to the author of the article), several members of the Academy investigated infectious diseases among farm animals and developed several vaccines to protect them.

In 1954, a Kyrgyz scientist discovered how the use of the Unianium isotope could be used in order to determine the age of lakes and rivers … and as a result, for example, he was able to disprove the theory that the River Chu once flowed into Lake Issyk Kul.  

Development of a technique for the purification of Antimony in the mid 1960′s.  (Antimony is a mineral which is found along Mercury and Kyrgyzstan has a major deposit at Khaidarken in the Batken oblast, where the technique was first used – saving the Soviet economy a million rubles a year and making the plant the cleanest in the world at that time.

The design of special drilling instruments for use in the Soviet space programme in 1976 – which served on Luna 24, Venera 13 and Venera 14.

Research into the possibility of using animal blood as a substitute for use in blood transfusions for humans – a secret military project that came to a halt when the funding ran out due to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

I wasn’t too surprised that they not to feature perhaps the most famous (former) member of the Academy – Askar Akaev – a physicist who specialized in laser optics before he became President, who has now returned to academia and research in Moscow following the revolution in 2005 when he was deposed.

I was surprised, however, that they didn’t feature the work of Asel Satbaeva, particularly as she has recently been featured in an article in the popular newspaper Vecherniye Bishkek.  Maybe it’s because, at just 36, she’s still quite young but, according to the newspaper, she is recognized as “a well known scholar at the world level”.

Satbaeva went to a local school in Lebidinovka, (just outside Bishkek), and following school actually entered two Universities here in Kyrgyzstan.  Although her mother was a Historian and her father an architect, she chose to study science and engineering – specializing in the Strength of Materials, which was a relatively new course and she was one of the first 16 students in the country to take it.  The group was predominantly male, with just four women students – and one of those didn’t finish the course.  Apparently, she graduated top of her class.

She undertook a post graduate course, and worked to improve her English.  She saw an advertisment in the New Scientist magazine for an internship at Cambridge University in her specialty and decided to apply.  Within hours of sending off her resume by email, she got a phone call from the Professor in Cambridge who conducted a sort of “interview” over the phone and was so impressed that she won a place.  Just two weeks later she received her acceptance  letter.  She was the first student from Kyrgyzstan in the University.

After four years of study in Camdbridge, she took her Ph. D. and, after having undertaken research in the United States, (for example at the Arizona State Universioty), and at Oxford University, she now runs her own laboratory at the University of Bath.

Her main research was in the physics of minerals which could have significant implications in the synthesis of various minerals.  One day, while taking her daughter for vaccination, she was surprised that the vaccine was administered straight from the refrigerator.   Surely, she thought, it should have been warmed.  She was told that the vaccines have to be kept at a cool temperature, or else they would spoil and become useless.  Thinking about it she realized that her research on silicon and nanocells might have implications to overcome this problem.

She received a grant from the Royal Society to establish the laboratory in the University of Bath and further funding seems to have been provided by Google X to aid her research.

She has been invited to give lectures in conferences around the world, in America, Malaysia and Singapore for example, and earlier this year returned to Bishkek to take part in a programme to help encourage young students, especially girls, in pursuing a career in the sciences and to consider undertaking research.

 

 

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