Teen student in Ukraine helps with Stony Brook high school science project that's bound for outer space

Yan Starodubets lives in war-torn Ukraine, but studies online with the Stony Brook School and even helped with a school project that is sending an experiment to outer space.

Sometimes his studies get interrupted when air raid sirens go off as missiles fly overhead and he retreats to his basement. Other times he loses electricity.

But he has soldiered on, working with Stony Brook students on the space project and taking classes.

"My team was amazing,” he said, adding that the online program was “my last chance to gain a good education.”

Starodubets, 17, participates in Stony Brook’s “Gravitas” program, which seeks to bring a top-level U.S. prep school education to students worldwide. They zoom in to live classes with Stony Brook’s on-campus students.

The program operates in nine U.S. states and 20 countries, including China, Rwanda, South Korea, Uganda, Jamaica, Mexico, and Vietnam.

Starodubets, in an email, said the program had changed his life.

“After the war started, the quality of education in Ukraine rapidly went down,” he said. “A lot of good teachers and my classmates went abroad, and I did not know what to do, because I needed education, I needed to get a diploma.”

Stony Brook classes by night

Then he discovered the Gravitas program. By day, he studies at a school in Ukraine; by night, he tunes in to classes and clubs in Stony Brook, sometimes until midnight Ukraine time.

“Gravitas is my second family!” he said. “Every evening I am happy to join fascinating classes.”

“Some people say that it is too hard for me and that I should not take on so many tasks,” he said. “But warriors are dying every single day just to give our people an opportunity to live. I can't waste that opportunity. I am trying to help my country as much as I can. And my strongest side is education.”

Sean Riley, who heads the Gravitas program for Stony Brook, says Starodubets “hasn’t let the circumstances stop him. He’s incredibly resilient and really sharp.”

He said the program had given him a unique window into Ukraine.

"Sometimes I'll receive a call from a dad in the midst of an onslaught. He’s still wanting to check in to see how his kids are doing,” Riley said.

Starodubets was particularly helpful in the early stages of the science experiment that is headed to the International Space Station in May by coming up with proposals involving chemistry, said Stan Winston, who heads the school’s STEM program.

The team ultimately decided those proposals were too risky for the school’s first space shot, but may revisit them next time, Winston said.

Another Gravitas student on the team lives in India.

Other students in Gravitas

Some of the 10 Ukranian students in Gravitas have left their homeland and are refugees, Riley said.

One, in Germany, initially “was sitting on her suitcase for class because she didn't have a chair, but she had a computer and an internet connection,” he said.

The school hopes to spread its program to more strife-riven countries. In November, Riley traveled to Rwanda to explore how Gravitas can expand to such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Rwanda.

For Starodubets, he is now racing against the clock to complete his secondary education. When he turns 18 in December, he could be drafted into Ukraine’s military and sent to the front lines if the war with Russia persists, he said.

His dream is to pursue college in the United States.

“It is a real dilemma,” he said. “I am a citizen of Ukraine, and I have to protect my family, my sister, and my mother, my country from Russia. But from another point of view, I feel like I can help my country more if I get a good high-education in the U.S.”