Outstanding Achievement Award 2024

Wiktor Lewandowski, Marcin Magierowski and Błażej Skrzypulec received the 2024 NCN Award for their outstanding scientific achievements. The Award is given to researchers of the younger generation working in Polish scientific centres. The ceremony took place on 9 October in Kraków.

The NCN Award is the most prestigious distinction for researchers up to 12 years post-doctoral, conducting basic research. The most important criterion used by the jury to assess the achievements of the candidates for the award is their scientific excellence and international recognition.

The distinction is presented in three groups of disciplines – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Life Sciences and Physical Sciences and Engineering. More than 3,700 researchers were eligible to nominate candidates for the Award in this edition. 183 applications were received, covering 150 candidates. By the decision of the jury, consisting of members of the Council and the NCN Director, the distinctions went to researchers working in Kraków and Warsaw.

Dr hab. Wiktor Lewandowski is a chemist specializing in photonics and materials chemistry, a professor at the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Warsaw. He received a distinction in the area of science and technology. Research by Prof. Martin Magierowski’s research spans physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, and gastroenterology. A researcher from the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University’s Collegium Medicum in Kraków has been awarded the NCN Award in Life Sciences. The winner of the distinction in the arts, humanities and social sciences Dr hab. Błażej Skrzypulec is a philosopher, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University, and deals with the philosophy of perception.

“The number of applications presented the jury with a very difficult task. However, we are confident that in each category, we have chosen a winner whose scientific contributions have received substantial international recognition, and who has been ahead of the other outstanding candidates”, said Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak at the awards gala.

“We award people with passion, energy, those with perseverance and those who were lucky because they came across the right mentors at the right time in their career. Mentors who allowed them to spread their wings, build their own teams and achieve independence, a value that is extremely important in science”, recounted Prof. Małgorzata Kossowska, Chairwoman of the Council of the NCN.

The gala was attended by Dr hab. Maciej Gdula, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, who emphasised that the event is a great celebration of NCN and Polish science. “NCN is an independent institution, it is an institution that cares about the transparency of procedures. Basic research needs to be funded and we will fight to ensure that those who want to do such research have as much funding as possible, the deputy minister said.

The ceremony took place on 9 October at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Kraków.

 

Diversity of the senses, unity of experience

Błażej Skrzypulec works on philosophy of perception, in particular on structural aspects of sensory experience, extra-perceptual perceptual modalities and multimodal perception. He was recognized for his research on the structural aspects of perceptual experience.

In his own words, he sees the NCN Award as “an appreciation of research conducted in a rather special, often difficult-to-receive niche of the humanities and a recognition of efforts to conduct research at an international level, the content of which fits into current debates at the heart of the global academy”.

The winner uses methods of conceptual and logical analysis appropriate to analytic philosophy and aligns them with experimental findings from cognitive science and psychology. “I have noticed that the empirical sciences provide a wealth of interesting data on the functioning and interaction of the senses, but philosophy, on the other hand, provides precise categories to bring this data together in a coherent scheme. From there, my idea of investigating what I call structures of perceptual experience, that is, investigating the stable ways in which the senses present the world to us, was born”, describes the winner. He is particularly interested in senses that have traditionally received less attention, such as smell, and how the diversity of the senses gives, despite their differences, a unity of experience.

The researcher was the recipient of a scholarship from the Minister of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young researchers and a START scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science. He has led NCN-funded projects five times.

The door to future technologies

Wiktor Lewandowski specialises in photonics and materials chemistry. He received the 2024 NCN Award for his breakthrough technique for the production of chiral photonic nanomaterials.

The researcher, together with his team, is creating materials whose building block dimensions are counted in nanometres. “We design and synthesize organic-inorganic components that can spontaneously self-assemble at the nanoscale. Our primary achievement was producing spring-like nanomaterials with controlled torsion that strongly interact with circularly polarized light. These innovative materials not only impress with their ordered structure, but also open the door to future technologies for faster data transfer or advanced 3D imaging”, says the researcher. The researcher’s findings are stimulating the development of related fields – chemistry, physics and computational methods.

“The NCN Award is recognition of the work of the entire team, which I am proud to lead. It is an accolade that inspires us to continue our research, explore unknown areas and push the boundaries of knowledge further”, emphasises the researcher.

As written in the application for the Award, the researcher publishes “sparingly”, but in journals of the highest prestige, inaccessible to many other researchers, such as “Advanced Materials”, “Angewandte Chemie”, “ACS Nano” and others. He has some 50 publications to his credit.

Wiktor Lewandowski has been on internships at, among others, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and at scientific institutions in Slovenia and Spain. He is a winner of FNP programmes. He has led four NCN-funded projects. He is co-author of several patents and patent applications.

You can also hear about the winner’s research and the conditions for doing science in Poland in the latest episode of the NCN podcast.

Beneficial effects of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide

Marcin Magierowski conducts multidisciplinary research in the field of biomedicine. The main focus of the winner’s research involves the beneficial effects of molecules associated as harmful to life. The title of the achievement for which he received the NCN Award is carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide as key signal transducers in the pathogenesis and pharmacology of gastrointestinal lesions.

Carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide are natural poisonous gases, but at the same time it has been discovered that they are produced by our cells and regulate a number of molecular processes crucial to the maintenance of vital functions. “I seek to understand and describe these fundamental processes, the disruption of which, among other things, leads to many pathologies of the digestive system. Working with drug chemists from the US, Canada and the UK, we are also verifying that new substances releasing these molecules have a therapeutic effect, the researcher describes.

Marcin Magierowski is a grant manager at NCN and the National Centre for Research and Development. For his scientific achievements, he has received, among others, the Start Fellowship of the FNP and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education scholarship for outstanding young researchers, as well as a distinction from the American Gastroenterological Association and the European Rising Star Award 2024 (from United European Gastroenterology).

He has gained international research experience at universities in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands and Canada, among others. He was a member of the Academy of Young researchers of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the term 2020-2024.

The researcher emphasises the impact of the involvement of the entire interdisciplinary team he leads. “The NCN Award can be a ‘motivational lever’ for my entire research group, because in this industry it is good teamwork that determines success”, he says. In the film presenting the profiles of the winners, he appears surrounded by his colleagues as well as his wife and four children. “As a conscious father, I find that this is the best leadership training, bearing fruit outside the home too. It is such an allegorical flame that burns because there is effort and hardship, but does not burn out because it brings fulfilment and growth”, he says.

Basis for invention and innovation

The NCN Award is awarded for achievements in basic research. Basic research, driven primarily by curiosity rather than immediate applications, is the key source of invention and innovation.. “Science and the results of research are our civilizational hope in dealing with an increasing number of the increasingly acute and complex problems of the present day”, said Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, at the award ceremony. . “Advances in diagnosis and therapy have seen cancer move from the category of incurable and often fatal diseases to the category of chronic and often completely curable, added the NCN Director, who is himself involved in biomedicine. “For less than 10 years, humanity has had gene-based therapies to completely cure children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy, a disease that was previously considered a death sentence for affected infants. We have had drugs for cystic fibrosis patients for five years”, he gave examples. In doing so, the NCN Director pointed out that for research to flourish, it needs to be invested in. In the case of Poland, this implies an increase in funding for the NCN as an institution that plays a central role in the system for funding basic research. “As you can see, the need for additional financial support for NCN, is the source of many grassroots initiatives from our scientific community. Thank you very much for this support, and I appeal to decision-makers to listen to them”, he stressed.

In a similar vein, this year’s NCN Award winners speak out. “Without an institution like NCN, many of my colleagues would not have stayed in Poland or would not have returned to the country and pursued their research ideas abroad”, says Marcin Magierowski. He adds that research needs to be encouraged because “the intellectual potential in many fields is enormous in Poland”. “In the long run, the quality of our basic research will lay the groundwork for new technologies, allowing Poland to move from being an importer of technology to a creator”, adds Błażej Skrzypulec.