Being one of the leading events of the Minor Academy of Sciences (MAcS) of Ukraine, the All-Ukrainian Research Paper Defense Competition Among MAcS Student-members (the Competition)  aims at spiritual advance, creative and intellectual development of the children of our country, while fostering the patriot spirit, cultivating democratic values, and creating the conditions to form the nation intellectual potential.    

The key task of the Competition is to define and support gifted children, involve the creatively and intellectually gifted student youth in the research and experimental work, to form their active civic stand, making them self-dependent, persuasive, and able to form and defend their point.

Having annually arrived from most districts and cities of the Ukrainian oblastst’s, AR of Crimea, as well as the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol, about 100,000 gifted children take part in the I stage of the Competition. Resulting from the I stage and conducted at the regional level during the January-February period, the II Competition stage is held under the auspices of higher education institutions, post-graduate (“pislyadyplomna”) education institutions (which provides the students having got bachelor's degree with additional courses in their majors or in other specialties) and extracurricular education institutions etc.

The best MAcS of Ukraine representatives from the regional MAcS branches – the Competition II stage winners, more than 1,000 students – participate ­in the Competition final III stage held in Kyiv. In total, the defense competition covers 11 scientific sections divided into 60 sub-sections, embracing almost all directions of the humanities, natural and social sciences.

During the 2010 - 2012 academic years MAcS involves in its work new scientific departments and sections, with the important ones being the Philosophy, Social Science and Earth Sciences scientific departments; the Mechanical Engineering section of the Science and Technology department has been diversified by a prospective roborotics direction.

It is worth mentioning that the Competition Jury members have the high level of professional competence, most of them having many years' experience to deal with the students’ research papers and to work in the Defense Competition commissions.  While conducting the Competition, MAcS gets great attention and support from the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NASU), and the MAcS scientific departments’ curators. Now, it has become a tradition for the famous NASU academicians to meet with the young researches. The guests of the Competition are famous writers, socio-political figures, representatives of the Ukrainian culture and art, and foreign guests.