On the 6th and 7th of November, director of the National Science Centre, Professor Andrzej Jajszczyk, attended meetings and conferences that dealt with the prospects of cooperation between Poland and the United States in the field of research.
On the 6th of November, Professor Jajszczyk represented the National Science Centre at a session on Polish-American cooperation in biomedicine and information technology in medicine (Project for Polish-American Cooperation on Innovation in Biomedical Science) that took place at the Polish Embassy in Washington DC. Professor Jajszczyk delivered the plenary address “Advancing Innovation in Research” in which he made a presentation on the NCN, focusing particularly on various aspects of Polish-US cooperation and research in biomedicine. The conference was attended by representatives of Polish and American research institutions, clinics, universities and foundations, among whom was Mr George Herrfurth from the National Institutes of Health and Dr Ben Prickril from the National Cancer Institute. Those representatives and many other speakers during the session addressed such topics as the plan for Polish-American cooperation in treating small cell lung cancer, initiating a bilateral project on breast cancer, the training of paramedics, regenerative medicine and the economic and business aspects of Polish-American cooperation in biomedicine.
On the 7th of November, at the U.S. State Department, the director of the NCN, along with representatives of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the National Centre for Research and Development, took part in the III Polish-American Joint Committee for Science and Technological Cooperation. Present were representatives of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Energy, the NSF and NIH, as well as Polish and American academics and researchers. The main objective of the meeting was to decide on the scope and manner of Polish-American cooperation in research in the following areas: advanced energy systems and carbon capture and storage, shale gas extraction, medicine, IT in medicine, natural resource management. Other issues discussed included funding research challenges and the position of women striving to develop careers in research. Professor Andrzej Jajszczyk presented the operations of the National Science Centre and the Centre’s funding schemes that support interdisciplinary research incorporating IT into medicine. Accordingly, possibilities of financing common Polish and American research in this respect were discussed at the meeting.