We have now selected the winners of MAESTRO and SONATA BIS. The two calls attracted 472 proposals, 63 of which will receive a total of more than 188 million zlotys in funding. MAESTRO is a call for experienced researchers, while SONATA BIS targets those who want to set up a new research team. Both provide funds for salaries, including scholarships for students and PhD students, research equipment, as well as other necessary project costs.
The 14th edition of MAESTRO attracted 72 proposals, out of which the jury selected five winners. One is Prof. dr hab. Katarzyna Maria Jednoróg from the Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who will work on a project entitled Language Breakdown in Child Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Its purpose is to examine the connections between language deficits and disorders such as ADHD and the autistic spectrum disorder (ASD), and test the correlations between language development and the levels of hormones involved in social cognition. The project is expected to set out new directions for research on the relationship between the brain and behaviour in human development. Another grant will go to the winner of the NCN Award 2016, Prof. dr hab. Mikołaj Bojańczyk from the University of Warsaw, who works in theoretical computer science, automata theory and logic.
400 proposals were submitted in the 12th edition of SONATA BIS and 58 of these will receive funding: 9 in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 33 in Physical Sciences and Engineering and 16 in Life Sciences.
MAESTRO 14 ranking list (.pdf)
SONATA BIS 12 ranking list (.pdf)
Dr hab. Katarzyna Natalia Zawadzka from the Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań will work on a project devoted to the processes of metamemory, e.g. the way in which external clues can affect metamemory, and then memory, at each stage of the process: 1) learning new information; 2) deciding whether a piece of information we need is available in our memory; 3) attempts to retrieve the information. The ultimate goal of the project is to see whether this new knowledge can be used to help eliminate errors in how metamemory regulates memory processes.
In Physical Sciences and Engineering, Dr hab. inż. Artur Maciej Rydosz from the Faculty of Computer Science, Electronics and Telecommunications at the AGH University of Science and Technology will carry out a basic research project that may one day allow us to produce cheap and widely available sensors, e.g. to enable screening tests for lifestyle diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and diabetes.
Dr Milena Anna Damulewicz from the Faculty of Biology of the Jagiellonian University and her team will work on a model of Drosophila melanogaster (an insect more commonly known as the fruit fly) to analyse the molecular mechanism by which light affects the progression of Parkinson’s disease. She will try to show that, in elderly patients, disruptions of the circadian clock caused by light pollution cause a number of changes in eye cell metabolism, which ultimately accelerate neurodegeneration.
Other SONATA BIS 12 winners also include winners of the NCN Award 2022: Dr hab. Karolina Safarzyńska, who studies behavioural and experimental complexity economics and analyses climate change policies and Dr hab. Piotr Wcisło, a quantum physicist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.