The results of OPUS 22 and SONATA 17 are in. Winners will receive a total of nearly 740 million PLN to carry out 589 basic research projects at Polish research institutions.
The two recently concluded calls attracted 3005 proposals with a total budget of nearly 3.3 billion PLN; out of these, 589 were awarded funding, for an average success rate of 19.6%.
OPUS is a call targeted at a wide audience, placing no restrictions as to the career level, degree or research experience of the principal investigator. All applicants are subject to the same evaluation criteria, which include aspects such as scientific excellence, degree of innovation of the research problem, potential impact of the project on the academic discipline and academic and research track record of the principal investigator.
In this round of OPUS, alongside domestic research projects and projects conducted with foreign partners or with the use of large-scale international research equipment, applicants could also request funding under the Lead Agency Procedure within the framework of the Weave programme. This track allowed them to submit proposals prepared in cooperation with foreign research teams from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany or Switzerland, who submitted funding proposals to their respective domestic research-funding agencies that participate in the Weave programme.
Under OPUS 22, the NCN received 1866 submissions with a total budget of nearly 2.3 billion PLN. Funding was awarded to 350 projects, worth nearly 500 million. The success rate was 18.76%.
SONATA 17 is addressed at researchers who hold a PhD degree conferred 2 to 7 years before the proposal submission year; its objective is to support those at the outset of their careers in innovative research. This round of the call attracted 1139 proposals with a total budget of more than 1 billion PLN. In the end, funding was awarded to 239 projects worth more than 240 million PLN. The success rate for SONATA 17 was 20.98%.
The greatest number of successful projects under the two calls, i.e. 243 projects with a total budget of more than 294.3 million PLN, fell under the Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST). Funding was also awarded to 196 projects in Life Sciences (NZ), with a total budget of nearly 345 million, and 150 projects in Art, Humanities and Social Sciences (HS), worth more than 100.2 million in total.
One problem – many viewpoints
Problems tackled by the winners of the two calls will include issues such as environmental protection. Under SONATA 17, the subject is represented by a project entitled Nature protection area Natura 2000 as a multispecies network of dependencies. Non-obvious relations in anthropological perspective, headed by Dr Małgorzata Kowalska from the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań. Within the NZ panel, Dr inż Jacek Olchowik from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences will carry out a project entitled What don’t we know about private forests? Monitoring of ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity in different forest management regimes in the metagenomic approach in order to study the level of biodiversity in forest ecosystems and the diversity and composition of ECM mushrooms in private forests. Under the ST panel, Dr Oskar Głowacki from the Institute of Geophysics, PAS, will tackle the problem of climate change and glacier melting in a project entitled Studying glacier calving fluxes and calving styles through a novel combination of acoustic and optical methods.
The issue of energy will be addressed from different angles by several OPUS 22 projects. Under the HS panel, Dr hab. Sławomir Śmiech from the Cracow University of Economics will analyse the problem of energy poverty in terms of its profiles, gravity and dynamics. Prof. Dr hab. Dariusz Jakubas from the University of Gdańsk, who falls under the NZ panel, will carry out a project entitled What really matters for a high-Arctic zooplanktivorous seabird foraging in a rapidly changing environment: prey size or energy content? Representing the ST panel, Dr hab. inż. Magdalena Jaremkiewicz from the Cracow University of Technology will investigate a system of monitoring the thermal and strength performance of pressure components of power units.
All the problems addressed by the winners of OPUS 22 and SONATA 17 can be found via our ranking lists.
Proposal evaluation
Proposals in all NCN calls are evaluated by experts selected from among prominent Polish and international researchers with at least a PhD degree. The process is divided into two stages. Each encompasses at least two individual reviews of each proposal and a session of an expert team, during which the reviews are discussed before final ranking lists of projects recommended for funding are prepared. The final decision is taken by the NCN Director.
OPUS LAP proposals were evaluated together with all other OPUS projects by the same expert teams, but additional review criteria included the research record of the foreign partner team and their other research projects; evaluators also verified whether the contribution of all teams to the project was balanced and complementary.
OPUS ranking lists do not include OPUS LAP projects recommended for funding by expert teams at the National Science Centre, which are undergoing an approval procedure at relevant partner agencies.
Practical information
Today, we will dispatch all positive and negative decisions for calls submitted under OPUS 22 and SONATA 17. Please remember that the decisions of the NCN Director are sent electronically to the address indicated in the proposal.
If the applicant is an entity mentioned in art. 27 (1)-(7) and (9) of the Act on the NCN, the decision will only be delivered to the Electronic Inbox (ESP ePUAP) provided in the proposal. If the applicant is a natural person and has listed an ePUAP address in the proposal, the decision will be sent to that address. Otherwise, a message will be sent to the applicant’s indicated e-mail account, containing a link from which the decision of the NCN Director can be downloaded.
The funding decisions of the Director of the National Science Centre are also communicated to the principal investigator and, if the applicant is a natural person, to the host institution indicated in the proposal.
If you do not receive a decision, please make sure that the address (ESP, ePUAP, e-mail) listed in your proposal is correct. If not, contact the person in charge of the proposal, as indicated in the OSF system.