Under the Weave-UNISONO call, researchers from Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, together with partners from Switzerland and Austria, will examine the genomesof beech forests in terms of their capacity to adapt to variable environmental conditions.
The Polish team, led by Prof. Dr hab. Jarosław Burczyk from Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, in the project entitled 'Seeing the forest through the trees: understanding the significance of individual-level genetic variation for the functioning of beech forests', together with partners from Switzerland and Austria, will investigate the importance of the genetic diversity of European beech for the ability of forests to adapt to climate change. The researchers will analyse over a thousand tree genomes from across the entire range of the species, using genomic data, environmental monitoring and remote sensing techniques. The research will provide a better understanding of why individual trees differ in their resistance to drought and other environmental factors, and which traits are heritable. The project will also produce a pangenome of European beech, presenting the full genetic diversity of the species. The results obtained are intended to help protect beech forests and to support the adaptive management of their genetic resources under progressing climate change. The Polish budget for the project is over PLN 2.5 million. The proposal was evaluated by the Swiss agency SNSF, and NCN together with the Austrian agency FWF accepted the results of this evaluation under the Weave programme.
Weave-UNISONO and Lead Agency Procedure
Weave-UNISONO is a result of multilateral cooperation between the research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures in all academic disciplines, involving researchers from two or three European countries.
The winning applicants are selected pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure according to which one partner institution performs a complete merit-based evaluation of proposals, the results of which are subsequently approved by the other partners.
Under the Weave Programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding to the Lead Agency and their respective institutions participating in the Programme. Joint research projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly identified.
Weave-UNISONO is carried out on an ongoing basis. Research teams intending to cooperate with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are urged to read the call text and apply for funding.
From more stable quantum computers and ultra-fast quantum internet technologies to sensors capable of detecting minute variations in gravitational fields, researchers involved in the projects selected under the QuantERA Call 2025 will work on key technologies underpinning the future quantum infrastructure. The research will combine quantum physics, photonics, mathematics, computer science, and nanotechnology. Notably, as many as seven of the awarded projects will be carried out with the participation of Polish research teams.
The fifth QuantERA call was launched in September 2025 by 34 research funding organisations from 29 countries and attracted significant interest from the scientific community from the outset. A record number of 287 proposals were submitted, from which 39 winning projects were selected. The strong interest in the Call 2025 competition demonstrates the importance of the QuantERA Programme and the need for its continuation, ensuring sustained funding for future research projects in one of the fastest-growing scientific domains. Among the awarded consortia are seven research teams from Poland, including one project coordinated by a Polish researcher. Five projects will receive funding from the National Science Centre (NCN) within the scope of basic research, one project will be funded by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) within the scope of applied research, while one of the Polish teams will finance its participation from its own resources.
– Implementation of Call 2025 reaffirmed the critical role played by the QuantERA initiative in the European quantum ecosystem. Record numbers of proposals have been received in two call topics: 148 in Quantum Phenomena and Resources and 139 in Applied Quantum Science. These figures vividly illustrate the wealth of fresh ideas and concepts that quantum research community seeks to explore through transnational collaborations.
Thanks to the commitment of research funding organisations participating in the call and the substantial EU financial contribution, in total 39 of the highest-ranked proposals will be funded in both topics. The results of QuantERA-funded projects will undoubtedly strengthen European position in the global efforts to benefit from the second quantum revolution.–says prof. Konrad Banaszek, QuantERA Scientific Coordinator.
List of the projects with the participation of Polish research teams
EQUALITIES – Efficient Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing via Fine-Grained Logic Gates on Qudit Codes
Polish Principal Investigator: prof. Remigiusz Augusiak, Center for Theoretical Physics PAS, Warsaw
Research team comprising researchers from Austria, Finland, Germany and Spain
HEMS – Heat and Entropy Management in Superconducting Devices
Polish Principal Investigator: dr Maciej Zgirski, Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences
Research team comprising researchers from Finland, Germany and Italy
INTEGRA – Innovative Architectures for Next-Generation Trapped Atom Interferometers
Polish Principal Investigator: dr Jan Chwedeńczuk, University of Warsaw
Research team comprising researchers from Austria, France, Germany and Italy
SDPCode – Semidefinite foundations for quantum codes: convergence, bounds, and constructions
Polish Project Coordinator dr Felix Huber, University of Gdansk
Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany and Slovenia
ToDiQT – Towards Device-independent Quantum Technologies
Polish Principal Investigator: dr Felix Huber, University of Gdansk
Research team comprising researchers from Austria, Belgium and France
QUASIMODO – QUAntum SImulations with MulticOmponent ultracolD atOms
Polish Principal Investigator: dr Emilia Witkowska, Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences
Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany, Lithuania and Spain
QUICFIRE – QUantum Internet Components in all-FIbre REalisation for low-loss entanglement distribution
Polish Principal Investigator: dr Michał Karpiński, University of Warsaw
Research team comprising researchers from Austria and United Kingdom
For more information, including a full list of projects recommended for funding, please visit the quantera.eu website.
The QuantERA Programme is coordinated by the National Science Centre, Poland.
The NCN Generation is made up of researchers whose work pushes the boundaries of knowledge and changes our lives – improving health, protecting the environment, advancing technology and deepening our understanding of the world. The protagonist of episode 5 is Maciej Trusiak, who builds lensless microscopes that can image hundreds of thousands of cells in a single frame. Thanks to them, it is possible to check, immediately after a sample is collected, whether a biopsy is suitable for further analysis.
Maciej Trusiak is a professor at the Faculty of Mechatronics of the Warsaw University of Technology, where he leads the computational imaging group. As he himself emphasises, from the very beginning he was driven to “ask his own questions, follow his own path, and pursue his own goals, plans and dreams”. He started out on his own, and today he leads a team of 15. His research is funded by NCN and the European Research Council.
A simple device with a concrete application
An oncological diagnosis often begins with the collection of a small sample – cells or tissue – for example a thyroid smear. A histopathologist assesses it only after the slide has been stained, which takes time, and sometimes it turns out that the material was collected incorrectly and the biopsy has to be repeated.
The lensless microscope developed by Maciej Trusiak’s team makes it possible to check the quality of the specimen immediately after collection, before it goes on for further processing. This makes it possible to detect more quickly that a biopsy needs to be repeated, sparing the patient valuable time. As the researcher emphasises, the device will not replace the histopathologist, but it can become a tool for their preliminary assessment. The first research units are already being installed in the laboratories of biologists and physicians. Implementing a clinical version requires a manufacturing partner and – as the researcher himself estimates – several years of work. The design itself is, moreover, very inexpensive: the camera costs around one hundred dollars, the light source is an LED, and the sample is placed on an ordinary glass slide.
A hologram instead of a lens
A classical microscope magnifies the image using a system of lenses, and the drawback of such a solution is the small field of view – only a few cells can be observed at a time. In lensless microscopy there are no lenses. The sample lies directly above the camera sensor and is illuminated by a beam of light which – passing through the thin specimen – undergoes slight scattering. The undisturbed wave and the wave disturbed by the sample overlap and form a hologram on the sensor array. The image is produced only at a second stage, numerically: an algorithm reverses the propagation of the light and reconstructs the structure of the sample.
Such an arrangement makes it possible to image an entire cell culture – tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of cells at once. This increases the chance of capturing significant phenomena and reduces the risk of drawing erroneous conclusions on the basis of a fragment. The lensless microscope also copes with transparent samples, which do not absorb light and remain invisible to a classical camera. For this purpose it uses phase contrast – a mechanism described in the 1930s by Frits Zernike (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1953). Different intracellular structures – the nucleus, mitochondria, the cytoskeleton – delay the passing light wave to varying degrees, and reconstructing these delays makes it possible to distinguish them within the cell without the need to stain it.
A world record in lensless tomography
Lensless microscopy is currently being developed at many centres around the world – in the United States, China, Germany and the Netherlands. The common goal is to obtain as much information as possible from a single measurement: a wide field of view, a large measurement volume and high contrast when imaging transparent samples. A particular challenge remains tomography, that is, three-dimensional imaging.
The previous world record belonged to the team of Prof. Aydogan Ozcan from UCLA, who imaged a slice of mouse brain 200 micrometres thick. The team from the Warsaw University of Technology has pushed this limit to 500 micrometres, taking into account the phenomenon of multiple light scattering and numerically reversing it. The paper describing this result has been accepted for publication in the journal Light: Science & Applications.
Selected quotes
An advantage over the classical microscope
Classical microscopes allow you to image five to ten cells, which means we have a field of view at least ten thousand times larger. I like to think that this gives us two advantages. Firstly, we increase the probability that we will see something interesting, because we image all the cells. And the second thing is that we lower the probability that we will make some kind of error. If we look only at a fragment of a larger whole, we can very easily form a false impression and misjudge the situation.
Application in diagnostics
The best application that comes to my mind is to assist in diagnostics. (…) We take a smear, for example from the thyroid, we have a sample prepared for examination, but we do not know whether it is diagnostic. The histopathologist first has to stain it, look at it, and may then say that the biopsy was collected incorrectly. And we, before all this happens and we lose valuable time – especially for oncology patients – can quickly check whether the specimen was collected properly.
It begins with curiosity
(…) research on lizard venom led to a change in the treatment of diabetes and in human weight loss. It did not begin with the production of medicines at all. Curiosity is absolutely the most important thing, and it is at the start of every discovery. To realise that curiosity, funding is needed. The National Science Centre is essentially the only body in Poland that funds such research. It is very good that it exists – I would like the NCN budget to be at least doubled.
What does NCN mean for researchers?
I have been using funding from the National Science Centre since PRELUDIUM, which my mentor, Professor Krzysztof Patorski, helped me to write. The OPUS and SONATA grants were an absolute foundation that enabled me to apply for an ERC grant at all. I managed to secure it thanks to the experience I had previously gained by delivering NCN grants and building a team. Independence comes from funding – without NCN’s programmes I would not be in science.
The #pokolenieNCN series consists of 15 conversations with 15 researchers to mark the 15th anniversary of the National Science Centre. Each conversation lasts 15 to 20 minutes. They are hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.
In earlier episodes we spoke with Aleksandra Rutkowska, Michał Tomza, Małgorzata Kot and Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska. In the coming episodes we will see Agata Starosta, Karolina Safarzyńska and Maciej Grzybek. The episodes are released on NCN’s YouTube channel every third Thursday.
We would like to invite researchers interested in the Trans-Atlantic Platform (T-AP) for Social Sciences and Humanities call Preparing for Tomorrow – Societies and Strategies in Times of Transition (P4T Call 2026), to participate in the live webinar on Monday, 8th of June 2026, 15:00 (CEST). During the webinar, general rules and key features of the call will be presented, followed by a Q&A session. The webinar will be conducted in English.
Funding proposals may be submitted by international consortia composed of at least 3 research teams from at least 3 countries participating in the call from both sides of the Atlantic (e.g. Poland-Canada).
The NCN Generation comprises researchers and scholars making a significant contribution to the advancement of science. Episode 4 features Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, who studies the resettlement cultures that emerged after 1945 in post-resettlement areas in Poland and the former Czechoslovakia.
Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska is a cultural studies scholar, Bohemist and ethnologist, and a professor at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her research is funded by NCN and the European Research Council. She is a 2023 NCN Award winner.
Things that ask questions
A portrait of an unknown woman from the Wittmann photography studio in the former Deutsch Krone, today’s Wałcz. Fragments of roof tiles from the Sturm works in Freiwaldau, today’s Gozdnica, reused to reinforce the foundations of a post-war building. Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska treats such objects as material traces that raise questions about the earlier inhabitants of these lands.
The researcher works with the thesis that things left behind by displaced communities act as ‘ghosts’ of those earlier cultures – they point back to the world in which they were made, even though they now exist in an entirely different present. As the researcher herself puts it, they work in both directions: they turn attention towards the past, but they also ‘tilt it towards the future’, because every engagement with such a legacy is undertaken with the intention of something that is yet to happen.
For the regions in which such processes unfold, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska has introduced the scholarly category of resettlement cultures (kultury osadnicze).
Post-war migrations affected one in four people in Poland, and eighty years after the war the Polish language still lacks a neutral vocabulary for describing these processes – both the lands themselves and the people who arrived there, as well as those who were displaced from them. The quotation marks around ‘Recovered Territories’ are the most visible sign of what remains unsaid.
Why this knowledge matters
‘The year 1945 was not year zero. It was the beginning of a long process in which new bonds, new meanings and new ways of life took shape in spaces inherited from others,’ says Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska.
The first generation of settlers treated their new surroundings as foreign; the second – already born there – saw them as self-evident. The third and fourth generations are beginning to ‘stumble’ over this materiality and to ask who was there before. It is they who today face a problem for which there are not yet any ready-made tools of description – or even language.
Distinct traditions are taking shape in these regions, invisible in the dominant historical discourse, and the ethnographic toolkit – sustained presence in the field, repeated visits to interviewees, engagement with the materiality of objects and archival sources – makes it possible to describe them. Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska defines the aim of her research plainly: to describe how new communities form and how they produce their own ‘cultural whole’.
‘I would like us to move beyond seeing these regions as a uniform patch on the map where nothing is happening, and to think a little more deeply instead about what is in fact going on there,’ the researcher says.
Selected quotations
On fieldwork
I usually go back to these people several times – to ask about something, or to talk about something else, or just to catch up, to hear how they are and to share how I am. So very often a kind of bond develops there – I would not quite call it friendship, because of the age difference between us – but a bond, a relationship, that goes beyond simply “please answer this and that question for me”.
On archives
We sometimes think of an archive as a place that, in principle, contains everything – you just have to look carefully – but our Central European archives have been through a great deal, much like the regions we live in. That is, they are often damaged, incomplete – something is missing, something has been deaccessioned, something never made it there at all. (…) I like to return to documents that I have already seen several times, to read them again, because the materiality of the document also matters to me. What it is written on, what is on the back, what later annotations subsequent readers have left, who looked at the file before me.
On things as ghosts
The things we encounter in these post-resettlement areas behave a little like ghosts of those earlier cultures, of those communities that were displaced from there. That is, objects that somehow raise questions – they do not always provide answers, but they remind us that someone was there before, without necessarily saying who.
Research on the past and on the future
The better we know ourselves, the more resistant we become to the stories others tell us about ourselves. We are less swayed by the kind of stories that are meant to explain the world to us and nudge us towards something that may not necessarily be true.
This idea of things as ghosts shows just how much of what we do, even with the past, is tilted towards the future. We always do it with the intention of something that is yet to happen.
What does NCN mean for researchers?
It is an opportunity for autonomy – a chance to test whether our idea, once we translate it into a project, is feasible, to learn what others think of it, and to obtain feedback.
The #NCNgeneration series comprises 15 conversations with 15 researchers to mark the 15th anniversary of the National Science Centre. Each conversation lasts around 15 minutes. They are hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.
In earlier episodes we spoke with Aleksandra Rutkowska, Michał Tomza and Małgorzata Kot. Upcoming episodes will feature: Maciej Trusiak and Agata Starosta. The episodes are released on NCN’s YouTube channel every third Thursday.
More than 3,700 proposals have been submitted to the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls – almost 500 more than last year. This is the largest edition of these calls in NCN's history. First-stage results will be announced on 27 May and second-stage results on 11 June 2026.
Although 11 June is later than in previous years, this date will allow applicants shortlisted for the second stage but not awarded funding to submit proposals to the next calls – OPUS 31 and PRELUDIUM 25 – which remain open until 16 June.
Proposal numbers are rising, but our capacity is not
The roughly 15 per cent increase in the number of proposals submitted to the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls is part of a broader trend: researchers working in Poland are submitting more and more proposals to NCN. The MAESTRO 17 call, concluded in February, attracted 20 per cent more proposals than the previous edition, while SONATA BIS 15 attracted 15 per cent more. In the SONATINA 10 call, which closed in February, the year-on-year increase was almost 34 per cent. We also expect more submissions to the MINIATURA 10 call, which remains open until the end of July.
The increase in proposal numbers is good news: it reflects the ambition of the research community and shows that researchers have ideas they want to pursue.
It also poses an enormous organisational challenge for NCN. Despite our repeated appeals, there has been no significant change either in funding for the institution's operations or in the limits on the number of staff NCN may employ. The increased number of proposals is being handled by the same number of staff who were responsible for the process several years ago.
The scale of the workload can be seen in the number of tasks facing discipline coordinators and staff at the NCN Proposal Processing Department.
During the eligibility check, each proposal must, among other things, be examined for any conflicts of interest, that is, any links between its author, the persons named in the proposal and foreign collaborators on the one hand, and the experts who will evaluate it on the other. We also check how many proposals the principal investigator has submitted, how many projects they are running at the same time, and whether any waiting period applies after an earlier rejection. We check whether the university or other institution named as the project host meets the requirements set out in the call conditions. We also examine the length of the project description, the accuracy of the budget, the list of publications and the completeness of all mandatory tabs. In LAP/Weave calls, we additionally forward the results of the merit-based evaluation to the partner institutions.
At the merit-based evaluation stage, a larger number of projects means, among other things, that more reviews must be verified before Expert Team meetings, more experts must be trained, and a wider group of external reviewers must be invited to review proposals shortlisted for the second stage.
The rising number of proposals also affects the length of Expert Team meetings, which now frequently last three days. Since evaluation is carried out across 26 NCN review panels, this considerably lengthens the overall process.
After each stage, we must also verify a much larger number of statements of reasons for decisions.
Evaluation in line with our standards
We know how important the results announcement date is for planning further research and academic careers. At the same time, our priority remains a reliable and rigorous evaluation process, which underpins the research community's trust in NCN. This is why the results of this year's edition of these calls will be announced a few weeks later than usual: this is the time required to conduct the process fully in accordance with our standards.
Resubmitting a proposal to subsequent NCN calls
The OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 results will be announced shortly before the OPUS 31 and PRELUDIUM 25 calls close. We remind applicants who do not receive funding under OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 and wish to apply again in subsequent calls that, where the research tasks overlap with those in a previous proposal, a new proposal may be submitted only once the NCN Director's decision refusing funding has become final. This occurs once the 14-day appeal period has expired.
In order to submit a new proposal in time for the calls open until 16 June, an applicant must waive the right to appeal before that deadline expires. Once such a declaration has been delivered to NCN, the decision becomes final, making it possible to resubmit the proposal in the new calls.
Applicants should submit the declaration to NCN in writing to the following address: ul. Twardowskiego 16, 30-312 Kraków, or electronically (signed with an advanced or qualified electronic signature in PAdES format) to the ESP: /ncn/SkrytkaESP or to the electronic delivery address: AE:PL-30168-16398-EHSIE-12.
Should you have any questions about waiving the right to appeal, please contact the officer responsible for your proposal, as indicated in the OSF system.
In the latest episode of the NCN podcast, Prof. Margaret Ohia-Nowak and dr inż. Tomasz Szumełda discuss the results of a survey on the use of AI in proposal writing, as well as research into bias in Polish language models—a project led by Margaret Ohia-Nowak and funded by the NCN. Hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.
Margaret Ohia-Nowak is a linguist and media scholar at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. Her research focuses, among other things, on race, racialisation and the language of public discourse in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. Tomasz Szumełda served for many years as an NCN scientific coordinator. He is currently involved in implementing the e-Grants system (e-Granty) and represents NCN in the AI working group at Science Europe, an association of research funding agencies and scientific institutions.
AI in the grant system
In autumn 2025, NCN conducted a survey among principal investigators of projects submitted in recent editions of the OPUS, SONATA and PRELUDIUM calls, asking about the scope of GenAI use in preparing proposals and the limits of its acceptable use. A total of 2,708 respondents took part. Around 60% of respondents believe that NCN should allow the use of GenAI in preparing proposals, while 42% admit they have already used such tools. At the same time, most respondents oppose the use of AI to develop research concepts, formulate hypotheses and prepare literature reviews. The position is even clearer when it comes to proposal evaluation: 67% of all applicants and 72% of grantees exclude the use of GenAI in this process.
Tomasz Szumełda notes that the survey results are consistent with NCN’s position published in May 2025, which allows the auxiliary use of GenAI in preparing proposals and prohibits its use in scientific evaluation. “The research community itself separates form from content, which shows that NCN’s approach aligns with applicants’ expectations,” he says. Margaret Ohia-Nowak, who also completed the survey, agrees with this distinction and adds that AI can be useful for translation and language editing, but the research concept must remain the work of the researcher.
Tomasz Szumełda also emphasises that the guidelines developed by NCN are aligned with a broader European approach. Work is ongoing within Science Europe to develop common recommendations for national agencies, and NCN’s current approach—allowing the auxiliary use of AI by applicants and prohibiting its use in evaluation—is consistent with the prevailing direction in Europe. An exception is the German agency DFG, which has recently allowed reviewers to use AI for language editing and structuring their own critical comments. However, DFG prohibits the use of publicly available models, allows only local institutional servers, and requires reviewers to indicate which parts of their reviews were generated using AI.
Subtle algorithmic bias
The podcast also discusses AI as a field of research. NCN funds projects on AI across multiple areas, from machine learning algorithms and language models, through applications in medicine and biology, to analyses of its social and legal implications. One such project is Margaret Ohia-Nowak’s research on Polish large language models (LLMs). The researcher analyses how the teams developing the Bielik and PLLuM models address safeguards against reproducing ethnic and racial stereotypes. Findings from the first phase indicate that Polish models include a wide range of bias-mitigation measures, and that the range of solutions continues to expand.
The researcher notes, however, that initial, instinctive model responses may be less nuanced, as illustrated by the following example:
“But even today, I asked ChatGPT to generate an image of a wise person. And that wise person… White, with a moustache. These models are now able to differentiate. But three years ago, in 2023, when the idea for this project first emerged for me, they were not. From my corpus research, I already know that these models can be subtly biased. Even when trained to reduce bias, their first response to a question about a ‘wise person’ often reflects a very stereotypical image. The question is: how can we make those initial responses different?” she says.
The project, scheduled for completion at the end of 2027, is expected to result in a guide for two groups: users, supporting them in constructing prompts that generate more culturally sensitive content, and teams developing future Polish LLMs, providing them with a set of good practices.
Selected statements
Margaret Ohia-Nowak
I smiled when I heard that most respondents do not support using AI tools to develop research concepts. I also selected that answer. However, when it comes to formalities, which are often difficult—especially for those with no experience in writing proposals, or in structuring them—this can also be helpful, although much of it is already specified in the call or proposal description. I think these are technical aspects that funding institutions should allow, and NCN does. It involves support with minor translations or language editing, but not with the creative contribution.
Tomasz Szumełda
At this point, NCN’s position is clear: AI should not, in any way, interfere with the merit-based evaluation process. We could probably record a whole separate podcast on this topic. Let’s imagine, for example, an AI reviewer who, having been fed a huge database showing that this type of research has received funding over the last three years, might conclude that the research is not innovative—or, conversely, that it is innovative—because it will have been fed a dataset that subsequently suggests appropriate responses.
There have been situations where experts and reviewers evaluating the proposals did indeed feel that something was off. That the research concept or the proposal was in some way superficial, generic. Someone asked a simple question and received a simple answer. What was missing was depth and coherence between the methodology and the track record. Such proposals were typically evaluated as being of low quality, yet they required the involvement of human resources to assess something that had no substantive value.
The full results of the survey on the use of GenAI in the NCN grant system are available in the report of the NCN Analysis and Evaluation Team.
Two-thirds of NCN researchers oppose the use of generative AI in the evaluation of grant proposals. At the same time, 60% believe that NCN should allow its use in their preparation. This is the main finding of a survey conducted by NCN among principal investigators submitting proposals in OPUS, SONATA and PRELUDIUM calls concluded over the past two years.
The boundary defined by researchers themselves is clear: generative AI is acceptable as an editorial tool for language editing, translation and abstracts. As the author of a research concept or as a reviewer of a proposal, it is not.
The findings are consistent with NCN’s position from May 2025, which allows the auxiliary use of GenAI in preparing proposals and prohibits its use in scientific evaluation.
The survey was carried out in October 2025 by the NCN Evaluation and Analysis Team, led by Dr Anna Strzebońska.
What they do and do not want
A total of 42% of respondents have used GenAI tools. They most commonly used them for language editing of proposals (39%), preparing abstracts, including abstracts for the general public (18%), and translating text (14%).
More than half (54%) believe that generative tools should not be used to develop the proposal concept or prepare literature reviews. Nearly one in two respondents (46%) support a ban on using AI to prepare summarised versions of proposals for experts.
Differences can be observed between calls for early-career researchers and the call open to all applicants. In SONATA and PRELUDIUM, 49% and 45% of applicants respectively used GenAI, compared with 37% in OPUS. Responses do not differ significantly across scientific groups, suggesting that these tools are already part of everyday research practice.
Three approaches
Three regulatory approaches emerge from respondents’ comments.
The first emphasises full responsibility of the researcher. The reasoning is pragmatic: bans are difficult to enforce, and funding agencies lack reliable tools to detect AI use in proposals. A proposal drafted using AI thoughtlessly will show signs of being formulaic, which an expert will quickly recognise, and given the low success rates in NCN calls, such a project will not succeed.
The second approach calls for a complete ban. The reasoning is ethical: a grant proposal demonstrates a researcher’s competence and forms an integral part of their creative work. Delegating writing to a machine is seen as unfair competition for independent researchers. One respondent compared the use of GenAI to doping in sport.
The third and largest group proposes a “middle ground”. It does not reject the technology but calls for clear rules and verification mechanisms: mandatory disclosure of GenAI use, a distinction between language editing and substantive content generation, and proportionate sanctions for discrepancies between declarations and the actual use of the tools.
Regardless of their regulatory stance, respondents point to the same risk: the leakage of unpublished research ideas into public models that use user data for further training. Text pasted into publicly available tools for language editing may be retained and lose its confidential status. The research community therefore expects solutions ensuring control over data flows, including on-premises tools and zero-retention policies.
Proposal evaluation: a clear “no”
The stance on the use of AI in proposal evaluation is much more clear-cut than in proposal writing. 67% of all respondents oppose it, rising to 72% among grantees. This opinion is consistent across scientific disciplines and independent of call outcomes.
The arguments go beyond general scepticism. Respondents refer to research indicating that large language models replicate the biases from training data and favour content that matches their own patterns over scientifically valuable content. Algorithmic evaluation would therefore favour proposals written to “please the algorithm”, rather than the scientifically strongest proposals. Concerns were also raised about new forms of manipulation, such as hidden instructions embedded in the text of the proposal (e.g. in white text) or excessive keyword use.
According to respondents, the only acceptable uses of AI for reviewers are formal tasks, such as checking completeness, compliance with call requirements, and the consistency of the document. Full responsibility for the content of the review must remain with the expert.
What next?
The survey results will serve as a starting point for further regulatory work at NCN. They point to three areas where clarification is expected: transparent declaration of GenAI use in proposals and reviews, data processing security, and training for applicants and reviewers, including protection against manipulation using AI tools (so-called prompt injection).
The approach adopted by NCN is consistent with a broader European standard, including the European Commission’s recommendations set out in Responsible Use of Generative AI in Research.
The full study forms part of the “Report on the Evaluation of NCN’s Activities”, which will be published after approval by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.
The section on GenAI is available as an attachment (PDF file).
Researchers from the University of Warsaw, in cooperation with partners from Croatia and Switzerland, will examine the issue of inequality in Eastern European countries.
Prof. Dr hab. Natalia Garner will lead the Polish part of the project entitled 'Mobilization around Inequalities: Navigating Deservingness, State Capacity, and Political Actors in Eastern Europe (RISE)', carried out with partners from Croatia and Switzerland. The researchers will investigate how citizens of Eastern Europe perceive different types of inequality – economic, ethnic, gender-based or related to sexual orientation – and why some of them become subjects of public debate while others do not. They will seek to answer the question of how the social sense of injustice translates (or does not) into specific political preferences and institutional action. The research will include, among other things, focus groups, surveys and interviews with politicians. The project brings a fresh perspective on the mechanisms of the politicisation of inequality and may help to develop more effective social policy. The project budget on the Polish side amounts to over PLN 790,000. The proposal was evaluated by the Swiss agency SNSF, and NCN together with the Croatian agency HRZZ accepted the results of this evaluation under the Weave programme.
Weave-UNISONO and Lead Agency Procedure
Weave-UNISONO is a result of multilateral cooperation between the research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures in all academic disciplines, involving researchers from two or three European countries.
The winning applicants are selected pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure according to which one partner institution performs a complete merit-based evaluation of proposals, the results of which are subsequently approved by the other partners.
Under the Weave Programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding to the Lead Agency and their respective institutions participating in the Programme. Joint research projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly identified.
Weave-UNISONO is carried out on an ongoing basis. Research teams intending to cooperate with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are urged to read the call text and apply for funding.
