They have returned to Poland after years at prestigious foreign institutions to head Dioscuri Centres of Excellence. The new episode of the NCN podcast talks about this joint initiative by the NCN and the Max Planck Society.
The Dioscuri programme enables outstanding researchers to conduct world-class research at host institutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
To date, eight such centres have been opened on the initiative of the Max Planck Society and the NCN. Dioscuri calls are open to researchers from all over the world, regardless of citizenship, nationality and discipline. Selected by an international academic committee, all the winners thus far are young Polish researchers who decided to return to Poland after years spent abroad. In a new NCN podcast episode, we will be talking to Dr Aleksandra Pękowska and Dr Grzegorz Sumara from the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS, winners of the first Dioscuri call in 2018, Dr Małgorzata Jacobs-Kozyra, discipline coordinator and the Dioscuri programme coordinator at the NCN and Agatha Iwanek, administrative coordinator for the Dioscuri programme at the Nencki Institute, PAS.
Dr Aleksandra Pękowska heads the Dioscuri Centre for Chromatin Biology and Epigenomics. Previously, she worked at one of the National Health Institutes in the US. “I was thinking of going back to Poland and responded to other calls, but the conditions of this grant and the idea behind it caught my eye and I decided to join this project”, she says.
In her Dioscuri project, she studies the contribution of astrocytes to brain evolution. “Most scientists focus on neurons. In contrast, we are interested in the cells that protect neurons, or astrocytes. The morphology of astrocytes has undergone a dramatic change in the course of evolution. But the basis, genes and DNA regions responsible for that change are still unknown, and we are looking for the genes that may shed light on the role of astrocytes in brain evolution”, Pękowska says. Her project is run in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics in Berlin.
Dr Grzegorz Sumara studies the molecular basis for metabolic disorders such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and atherosclerosis. “We focus on detecting changes that occur in intestinal adipose tissue in the development of obesity. Our goal is to discover molecular-level changes in physiology and then modify them in order to treat obesity and associated diseases”, he says. Dr Sumara’s team cooperates with researchers from the Technical University in Munich.
The podcast’s host, Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, will ask her guests about their research, other domestic and international NCN calls, and the impact of limited NCN budgets on research.
Tune in!
Dioscuri centres are funded by the Polish Ministry of Education and Science and the German Ministry of Education and Research. They are operated by PAS institutes and the Jagiellonian University.
Winners of other editions include:
- Dr Paweł Dłotko, Prof. Gracjan Michlewski and Dr Bartłomiej Wacław
- Dr Mikołaj Frączyk, Dr Przemysław Nogły and Dr Mateusz Sikora
Previous episodes:
Podcast # 1. Men and women in science
Podcast # 2. How we evaluate proposals
Podcast # 3. Budget, salaries, mobility
