The new episode of our podcast covers the NCN budget, resource allocation, NCN grant holder salaries and research mobility.
We will be talking with Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, member of the NCN Council, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director, and Prof. Michał Tomza, winner of several NCN grants and the NCN Award for 2020, ERC Starting Grant holder, and expert in calls organised by several foreign agencies.
On 15 March, the NCN Council has announced the first in a line of changes it needs to implement in NCN calls due to insufficient funds. The total number of NCN projects that may be headed by a single person and the proposals they may submit for review to the NCN was reduced to two (this number may be increased to three if at least one of the projects or proposals is part of an international call).
Our guests discuss the budget situation at the NCN and further measures that may help to stop or slow down the decline of the success rate in its calls. “Another measure we may still need to take this year will be a limit of one proposal per year, one per four call editions. This solution has the biggest chance of increasing the success rate”, says Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek.
The guests also told the host, Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, that research funding should be better allocated. ‘’There is a dramatic proportion of the budget of the NCN and the National Centre for Research and Development and it produces outcomes that are, shall we say, rather dubious. Perhaps the debate at the highest echelons of power should be about proportions. Without significant investment in basic research, there will be no applied research, and the funding gap between the two agencies is too great”, says the NCN Council member.
“The now former NCBR director boasted that he had spent over 70 billion zlotys on innovation, and the result is that...we are plummeting in global innovation rankings… We have come to a point where instead of business funding science, we have science funding business”, adds Prof. Zbigniew Błocki.
The second part of the podcast revolves around the issue of extra remuneration and salaries for principal investigators in NCN-funded projects. NCN representatives explain why there are differences between salaries offered in different NCN calls.
Towards the end, the guests discuss research mobility. “Mobility should be seen as part of the job description. People who choose a career in research should just assume it will be involved to some extent...Many other jobs have specific demands we know about before we get into them. But of course, we need to do our best to try and support people who may have a problem with mobility at some point as they build their family life”, says Prof. Michał Tomza.
