The winners of NCN Award 2022 will be announced on 12 October. The award is the most prestigious distinction conferred on young researchers working in Polish research centres.
The NCN Award is given to researchers under the age of 40 with a substantial record in the field of basic research, documented by publications affiliated with Polish research centres. The award is given in three groups of disciplines: Art, Humanities, and Social Sciences (HS), Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST), and Life Sciences (NZ), and the main criterion in the selection process is scientific excellence and international recognition.
10th NCN Award
The award has been given out annually since 2013. “This is one of our most important projects. Thanks to the consolidated position that the NCN enjoys in Polish science, the award comes with a lot of prestige, the competition is strong, and the distinction really goes to very good researchers”, says professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the National Science Center.
Past winners include eight researchers who have previously won grants from the European Research Council (ERC). For the first time in 2021, the NCN Award also went to two foreign researchers working in Poland, professor Sebastian Glatt from the Jagiellonian University and Professor Jonatan Gutman from the Institute of Mathematics, PAS. “Getting the NCN Award was a great honour for me. I continue to research various problems in topological dynamics and ergodic theory and I hope that my new work will win similar recognition”, professor Gutman comments.
650 nominators, 59 candidates
The jury of the NCN Award is made up of NCN Council members and the NCN Director. This year, 650 people were eligible to submit their nominations. These included e.g. previous NCN Award winners, former NCN Council members, and other prominent researchers. Only those born in 1981 and later were eligible for a nomination. The list of nominees included 59 researchers (70 nominations in total were submitted, but some candidates were nominated by more than one person).
Each nominator may nominate one candidate only. An important condition is that the two have not cooperated, taken part in joint endeavours, or published a paper together in the past 5 years. They should not have any family or professional connections, and the candidate must not be a former PhD student or a PhD holder who earned the degree under the supervision of the nominator.
Equal opportunity
Thus far, most winners have been men. This has not escaped the attention of the NCN Director and the NCN Council. “With the past several years in mind, in the spirit of levelling the playing field for male and female researchers, we will be immensely grateful if you take that criterion into account when picking your candidate for the NCN Award”, wrote professor Jacek Kuźnicki, President of the NCN Council, in his letter to the scientists eligible to submit nominations.
The winners of this year’s award will be announced on 12 October in the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in Sukiennice (branch of the National Museum in Kraków). In November and December, they will deliver a series of popular science lectures, which will also be streamed live.