53 researchers will perform their research activities with funding from the National Science Centre. The second ranking list of proposals submitted to MINIATURA 8 in March has been published.

Polish researchers involved in the OGLE project have summed up several years of their research into dark matter, in particular massive primordial black holes. Their research findings were published in Nature on 24 June. Their work was funded by the National Science Centre.

Over the past few months, the NCN Council has discussed many topics, e.g. NCN call portfolio, principal investigator’s grace period and mentoring programme. Prof. Alicja Kazek-Kęsik writes about the work of the Council.

Prof. Karol Życzkowski has been awarded the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for his research in quantum mechanics. The ERC Advanced Grant was awarded to a researcher working in Poland for the thirteenth time. 

“It seemed to me that the NCN (...) thought through its principles really well”, says Michał Żmihorski. “The fact that the NCN decided to host the meeting at all shows that it is open to the voices coming from the scientific community”, adds Wojciech Jasiński. We asked 5 researchers for feedback on a meeting that took place in Kraków on 4 June.

We are now taking in proposals under the SONATA BIS 14 call for researchers planning to set up new research teams and MAESTRO 16 for advanced researchers involved in pioneering research. The total budget of the two calls is PLN 170 million.

Researchers from Bydgoszcz, Gliwice, Lodz, Szczecin, Warsaw and Wroclaw among winning applicants of prestigious IMPRESS-U. Projects will be carried out in international collaboration with US and Ukrainian scientists. NCN will award over 7.3 million zlotys for that purpose.

The findings of recent research into a new nematic phase of liquid crystals, discovered by scientists from the Military University of Technology (WAT) and the University of Warsaw, were just published by “Science”. The research was conducted within the framework of an NCN-funded project and is expected to find many important applications.

All 323 proposals that were put on waiting lists under OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22, MAESTRO 15 and SONATA BIS 13 will now be funded, swelling the ranks of winners from 452 to 774.