On 2 July, government leaders of Poland and Germany met in Warsaw to adopt a document in which they agreed to boost social and economic cooperation. A science section of the document refers to the Dioscuri centres, a joint initiative of the National Science Centre and the Max Planck Society, and NCN’s collaboration with the DFG.

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.

Does Poland need a quantum computer? What are quantum technologies? How can researchers at Polish research centres contribute to quantum technologies? We are discussing these topics in our podcast today, featuring Sylwia Kostka and Konrad Banaszek.

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.

“Science for Policy – Policy for Science” was the theme of the Fourth Polish-German Science Meeting, held on June 10–11 in Warsaw. The event was organized by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) in cooperation with Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).