Age: 25
Education: International information, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
Profession: Cofounder of pop-science media Kunsht
Did you know? Beskorovayny was a FLEX exchange student in the U.S. for one year. He also was a youth delegate from Ukraine to the United Nations.
Kyrylo Beskorovayny does what he can to make science popular in Ukraine. His best tool is pop-science magazine Kunsht, which he co-founded.
After magazines National Geographic and Esquire stopped circulating in Ukraine in 2015, 20-year-old Beskorovayny and his friend Angelina Beznesyuk decided to fill the empty niche.
And it’s worked out. The 100-page magazine has written about space tourism, the human brain, time, the future of money and so on. The first and the second issues had a circulation of 1,000 copies, later scaled up to 2,000 copies. Nine print editions were published.
Many scientists supported the team and even started to write articles or provide expert commentary. The global aim is to teach people how to think critically, according to Beskorovayny. He dreams that people will start to read Kunsht at least once a week and will start to discuss science as they do politics or economics.
However, printing a magazine proved to be so costly that, in the spring of 2019, they launched the website kunsht.com.ua and switched completely online.
The Kunsht team has rolled out other projects, including exhibitions, educational videos shown in Ukrainian trains and the metro, columns in Ukraine International Airlines’ magazine, Panorama, programs at the Annual Publishers’ Forum and podcasts.
“We had an idea to make science accessible. Where’s most of the people? They are in the subway, intercity trains and planes,” Beskorovayny says. “They travel, have a lot of time.”
Besides, he says, public transport in Ukraine often lacks the internet.
“People are bored — let’s fill this time with science,” Beskorovayny says.
In 2020, at 25, Beskorovayny published his first book “My Female Friend From the Dark Matter.” It is about a boy from a family of astrophysicists who tries to get to know more about the universe. Although the publishing house marks it as a children’s book, Beskorovayny says that it’s “for all generations.”
Beskorovayny says that his love for science — especially chemistry — started in school. He studied at a Chernihiv school that specialized in foreign languages. Being good at English, he participated in academic competitions and won awards.
But chemistry was his true love. To impress his chemistry teacher, Beskorovayny learned by heart half of the periodic table of elements. Later, he won the chance to study in the U.S. on the FLEX high school exchange program for one year, choosing chemistry as one of his subjects. That led him ultimately to Kunsht.
Still, despite his interest in chemistry, he chose international information as his university specialty. There he met soulmates who became co-founders of Kunsht.
“The most important thing in higher education isn’t even knowledge — because knowledge can be gained in online courses — it’s the community,” Beskorovayny says.
