The academic community speaks up: “I am assuming that the new government will radically rewrite the budget for next year. I can’t even imagine it won’t start by increasing the NCN subsidy”, says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki in an interview for “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

“Gazeta Wyborcza”’s Alicja Gardulska asked academics about their post-electoral expectations for change in research and higher education.

“For the past six years, we have been kept on the breadline. The NCN call budget has stood still; the subsidies have failed to cover even the rise of inflation. And after all, the NCN funds research by the most  internationally recognised and active researchers working in Poland”, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN’s acting Director, confesses in the interview.

“There is a lot of room for change in the higher education and research budget. The government needs to take a close look at what the current minister had in store. There are many expenses that can be cut down”, he adds.

Prof. Błocki hopes that the new government will increase spending on innovation and the institutions of the research environment that have been established in recent years. Hopefully, he says, we will finally see an end to political interference in science: “We can’t have a minister personally decide which projects are funded and which are not”.

In the same article, the following people also weigh in on the NCN:

Prof. Marcin Pałys, President of the Main Council of Science and Higher Education

“We need to increase funding for the National Science Centre since, because of insufficient budget resources, it is now unable to deliver on its important mission. On the other hand, we need to take a look at the National Centre for Research and Development and clear up all the doubts around it. This is an institution with a really huge budget and its credibility needs to be restored.”

Prof. Marek Konarzewski, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences

“ … we need to avert any attempts to close down the NCN; it should be untouchable. And we need to address the issues that plague the NCBiR.”

The article was published on 20 October.

Director’s speech

Professor Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director, also called for changes in research policy on 11 October during the 2023 NCN Award ceremony.

A research component proposed by Prof. Ronald Borr from the Netherlands was recommended for funding by the NCN in cooperation with the National Agency for Academic Exchange under the “NAWA Chair” programme. Professor Borr will join the staff of the Medical University of Gdańsk to work on a project “Perfusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PWI), Optical Fluorescence imaging-guided surgery (FGS), Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Federated Learning (FL)”. This is the last component that will be funded under the programme.

Previously, NCN funds were awarded to Prof. Tomasz Taylor from the US and Prof. Brendan Kennedy from Australia.

The second edition of NAWA Chair was targeted at universities and research centres conducting research in life sciences, engineering, technology, medicine, health science and agriculture.

Within the framework of the programme, Polish universities will host three outstanding foreign researchers who will carry out research projects that address current civilizational challenges. Importantly, each project includes a research component funded by the National Science Centre. Visiting scholars will form project groups and actively apply for national and international grants.

On 11 October, the 2023 NCN Awards were handed out. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk about this most prestigious distinction for early-stage researchers working in Poland and research conducted by this year’s winners.

2023 NCN Award winners: Katharina Boguslawski, Łukasz Opaliński, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, photo credit: Michał Łepecki

Prof. Katharina Boguslawski, Prof. Łukasz Opaliński and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska are the winners of the eleventh edition of NCN Awards. Prof. Boguslawski is a quantum chemist working at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and member of the Polish Young Academy, PAS. Prof. Łukasz Opaliński is a molecular biologist from the University of Wrocław and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska specialises in cultural studies, Czech studies and ethnology at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Science.

Award ceremony footage

Our guests today are Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, member of the NCN Council and NCN Award jury panel.

Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska from the Polish Academy of Sciences specialises in memory studies and studies of objects and cultures of the so-called “Recovered Territories”. She looks at how the process of resettling areas previously inhabited by German and German-speaking communities unfolded in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. She says her research is about the “entanglement of time”, or the way in which the past continues to influence the present and the future.

Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz

She talks about her research to Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.

Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek talks about the principles guiding the jury’s selection procedure and amendment of the award regulations aiming to promote gender equality in science. The amended regulations will come into force next year.

Apple Podcast

YouTube

CHIST-ERA Call 2022 winners include three international research proposals submitted in cooperation with Polish researchers. Polish teams will get a total of more than 4 million zlotys in funding to pursue projects in the field of communication and information technologies.

The CHIST-ERA network awarded grants to a total of twelve international proposals submitted by teams from as many as 22 different countries. Eight fall under the “Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SpiDDS)” track, and four under “Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI, WAI”. Three projects include Polish teams; Poland is the leader of the international consortium in one and a member in the other two.

RANKING LIST

A Polish team headed by Dr hab. Marcin Pawłowski from the International Centre for the Theory of Quantum Technologies at the University of Gdańsk will coordinate a project entitled “MoDIC, Modern Device Independent Cryptography”. The purpose is to shore up the theoretical foundations of device independent quantum cryptography for practical applications. The researchers are planning to conduct new non-classicality tests, improve security proofs and develop new experimental configurations, working in cooperation with partners from Switzerland, France and Hungary. The Polish team will receive more than 2.3 million zlotys in funding from the NCN.

Prof. Hanna Bogucka from the Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications of the Poznań University of Technology and her team will join Project PASSIONATE (“Physics-based Wireless AI Providing Scalability and Efficiency”), coordinated by Spain, in cooperation with partners from Finland, France, Luxembourg and Poland. The researchers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to design wireless network architecture, integrating software-based solutions (algorithms and simulations) and equipment experiments (programmable radio devices). The budget of the Polish part of the project comes up to nearly 787 thousand zlotys.

The third Polish winner of CHIST-ERA Call 2022 is Dr hab. inż. Szymon Szott, who will head a team at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, working on a project entitled “MLDR: A Machine Learning-Driven Radio Interface”. The researchers will employ AI and machine-learning (AI/ML) techniques to boost the efficiency of next-generation wireless networks. The goal is to build a new machine learning-driven radio interface (MLDR), without the limitations of currently available wireless techniques. The research will be conducted by an international consortium led by Spain including, alongside Poland, partners from Finland and France. The Polish team will receive a total of nearly 871 thousand zlotys in funding.

CHIST-ERA Call 2022 was open to research proposals submitted by international consortia made up of at least three teams from at least three different participating countries. The PI of the Polish team had to have at least a PhD degree. Joint proposals were evaluated by two separate international expert teams, each appointed for one of the call’s two tracks: Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SPiDDS) and Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI (WAI).

Please join us at the EOSC Festival – the National Tripartite Event Poland during which we will discuss, inter alia, the Widening Countries’ perspective of the future of EOSC. 

The event will be held on 6 and 7 November 2023 at the Headquarters of the National Science Centre in Krakow. The first day will be streamed online. 

The EOSC festival is related to the National Science Centre’s participation in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), also as the national representative in the EOSC Association, and is intended to:

• present the European Open Science Cloud
• enhance cooperation and dialogue between key EOSC stakeholders in Poland and in the region
• discuss the directions of EOSC strategic development
• increase EOSC’s visibility in Poland, i.e., by notifying the national academic community of the implementation of EOSC in Poland   

 The festival will be officially opened on 6 November 2023, at 11 a.m. in the Headquarters of the National Science Centre at ul. Twardowskiego 16 in Krakow.

Short Agenda

Monday, 6 November (11 a.m. – 6 p.m.)

• Welcome and introduction to the first day  
• Polish Open Science Policy and the EOSC Tripartite Governance
• EOSC Landscape in Poland
• EOSC and Open Science Policies: priorities and implementation
• The future of EOSC

Tuesday, 7 November (10 a.m. – 3 p.m.)

• Welcome and introduction to the second day  
• The key challenges of EOSC in the Widening Countries
• EOSC Poland Network: Polish institutions towards the future of EOSC

 

---

Contact details: Open Science Team, email: otwarta.nauka@ncn.gov.pl

In response to the requests of the academic community and recent changes in publisher policy, the NCN has decided to temporarily relax the provisions of the “Policy of the National Science Centre on open access to publications” until 31 December 2025.

The National Science Centre strongly supports open-science initiatives, including campaigns to ensure open access to research data and publications. Open science is an essential aspect of research development in accordance with the highest standards of research integrity, as evidenced by the dynamic efforts undertaken in this area in the international arena. The principles of open science have already been implemented by various institutions involved in shaping research policy and funding research across the globe, such as the European Commission and Science Europe.

The NCN analyses information coming from the research community and monitors annual and final project reports, as well as publisher policies. At the same time, to guarantee scientific excellence, we strive to ensure that all publications based on NCN project results are published by international publishers who put an emphasis on high-quality peer review.

In addition, the NCN reasserts its commitment to observing and monitoring the development of global open-access practices.

The numerical success rate for the NCN calls in which results are to be announced in early December will be a single digit. “This is a great blow to Polish research, but we need to be clear about why this is happening. The budget situation at the NCN right now is tragic”, says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, the NCN Director.

OPUS is the NCN’s flagship call, open to researchers at all career levels. It gets more than half of the NCN’s budget resources. PRELUDIUM is targeted at the youngest researchers, who have yet to earn their PhD.

OPUS 25 and PRELUDIUM 22 were launched in March. The projects are currently under review, with results scheduled to be published in early December. Based on the proposals that were submitted, however, we can already estimate that the financial success rate will fall somewhere around 10%, and the numerical figure will be a single digit.

Grants will be awarded to just a few percent of researchers who applied for funding to pursue their research plans and ideas.

“This is a hard hit for researchers. We have always protested whenever the success rate dropped below 20% and it is now already below that of the ERC”, the NCN director says. “Nearly 2.2 thousand proposals with a total budget of almost 3 billion zlotys were submitted under OPUS 25. In PRELUDIUM 22, a similar number of proposals requested a total of more than 300 million zlotys. And our budget for the two calls is just 335 million.”

“I think we should consider adding a footnote to all negative funding decisions, like the one we get on our electricity bills, which tells us, e.g., to whom we owe this or that discount. It looks like the NCN will need to tell researchers who won’t get a grant why they didn’t get it despite submitting a very good proposal that absolutely deserved to be funded”, the director comments.

We have already raised the alarm that the NCN call budget has hardly increased over the past six years. In the same period, the sum requested by applicants grew by several dozen percent.

An appeal issued in June by the NCN Director and the President of the NCN Council, which asked the Minister of Education and Science to increase NCN’s funding by 300 million zlotys, has gone unheeded.

At the same time, the draft budget bill for 2024, submitted to the Sejm at the end of September, includes a 2.3 billion increase in spending on science and education. “The government did find enough additional resources for science, but despite its dire need, the NCN got nothing”, says Professor Błocki.

Out of these additional resources, 1.8 billion were slated, i.e., for additional subsidies. The budget of ministerial programmes was increased by 87 million, that of the Łukasiewicz Research Network by 60 million, with 122 million going to “other activities”.

“Polish researchers need a strong and independent research-funding institution in Poland. Independent operation of the National Science Centre and increased research funding are indispensable for successful development of Polish science”, say the recipients of the Minister of Education and Science scholarships for outstanding young researchers.

An open letter to Poland’s prime minister and president was signed by 114 researchers from various research centres in Poland.

“Many of us have conducted research solely due to the financial support from the National Science Centre. The funds supported pioneering research, creation of new research teams, and research in collaboration with foreign partners, thus safeguarding Poland's position on the international research arena”, the signatories write in their letter.

Full text of the letter

The letter of the scholarship recipients is yet another voice in defence of NCN’s independence. The Polish and international research community was alarmed by the Minister of Education and Science's declarations to “reform” or even close the National Science Centre in autumn and merge it with the National Centre for Research and Development and the Medical Research Agency. 

At the NCN Award ceremony, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki expressed his gratitude towards all those who spoke out in defence of the current grant system: “I would like to address words of gratitude to the representatives of the research community who have recently supported and defended the National Science Centre. Thank you for your letters, pleas, opinions, and interviews. Your support is very important! I am convinced that our joint efforts in support of Polish science will help protect the NCN which is so important for the future of our country”, said the Acting Director.

“The development of Polish science relies on the National Science Centre thanks to which researchers at all career stages can conduct high quality research that contributes to the development of Polish science and enhances Poland’s position in the world,” the Polityka award winners and scholarship grantees write in their open letter. 

The letter was sent to Prof. Przemysław Czarnek, Minister of Education and Science on 11 October. It was signed by 45 Polityka award winners and “Stay with us” [Zostańcie z nami] scholarship grantees. They joined the signatories of other open letters in support of the National Science Centre by ERC grant holders, FNP award winners, FNP fellows, winners of L’Oreal-UNESCO Scholarships for Women and Science and Science Europe association.

“Many of us have decided to return to and continue research in Poland having gained experience in prestigious foreign research institutions. The mere existence of the National Science Centre and the fact that our research can be funded by a Polish institution were crucial for that decision,” they say in their open letter.  

The signatories expressed their concern and protest against the Minister’s declaration to change the operation of or even close the National Science Centre. They argued that the current operation of the National Science Centre must be maintained and funds for funding increased. 

“Stable operation of the National Science Centre and, above all, significant increase in research funding are crucial to the maintenance of Polish research potential and thus other aspects of our lives,” they emphasize. 

Full text of the letter

Katharina Boguslawski, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and Łukasz Opaliński are the three winners of the NCN Award, the highest distinction for early-stage researchers working in Poland. In 2023, the award will travel to Toruń, Warsaw, and Wrocław. The ceremony took place on 11 October at the Gallery of 19th-Century Polish Art in the Sukiennice.

Prof. Katharina Boguslawski is a quantum chemist working at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and was selected as the winner in Physical Sciences and Engineering. Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, the winner in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, specialises in cultural studies, Czech studies and ethnology at the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences. Last but not least, the award for Life Sciences went to Prof. Łukasz Opaliński, a molecular biologist from the University of Wrocław.

The main criterion that guided the jury in the evaluation of the candidates and their achievements was their scientific excellence and international recognition. The award can be given to past and present NCN grant holders, but also to researchers who have never coordinated any NCN projects. This year, the jury chose from among 44 candidates nominated by the research community.

Checks for research

“Polish science is not yet lost so long as the NCN still lives”, said Prof. Zbigniew Błocki at the awards ceremony, “The NCN is an institution that gives early-stage researchers an opportunity to fast-track their careers and achieve research independence much earlier than would otherwise be possible in a reality that is not always auspicious and an environment that is highly hierarchical”, he added.

The acting director thanked all the researchers who have recently spoken out in defence of the NCN. “The existence of grant agencies that are completely independent of current politics and give the final say to researchers, rather than state officials, is a standard across the entire civilised world. Freedom is an absolute prerequisite for science.” Professor Błocki also commented on the situation of science in our country more generally: “We have observed dramatic cuts in research funding in proportion to what our country needs to continue to grow. And yet, year after year, the number of cheques publicly awarded for research funding and their figures continue to increase. This makes me think of a saying attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville, which is not really his: that "democracy will endure until the day the politicians discover that they can bribe the public with the public's money”, the director added.

A small breakthrough

This year, the NCN Award was given out for the 11th time. Among the 30 researchers who won it between 2013 and 2022, 25 were men and only 5 were women. “The award has been very male dominated thus far. This year, we have achieved a breakthrough, but, for now, it’s still only a breakthrough with a lowercase ‘b’”, says Prof. Robert Hasterok. This is the first year we have seen two women and only one man collect the award.

During the ceremony, the President of the NCN Council explained that as of next year, the terms and conditions of the award will change so as to implement a more stringent equality policy in the academic community. The most important change will have to do with the maximum age of the nominees. Until now, it was the chronological age that mattered (up to 40); from now on, the jury will take into account the nominee’s academic age (up to 12 years post-PhD) and make allowances for possible career breaks. The group of individuals eligible to nominate candidates will also be expanded. These changes were already passed by the NCN Council in mid-November 2022, but the ministry took more than 9 months until it finally approved them at the end of August 2023, which is why they will only come into force next year.

Achievements that are seen and appreciated

“This award gives me a sense that my research and achievements are really seen and appreciated within the Polish research community”, says Prof. Katharina Boguslawski.

Katharina Boguslawski, fot. Andrzej Romański Prof. Boguslawski is a quantum chemist, whose research combines chemistry, physics, mathematics and applied computer science. She focuses on developing innovative computing methods to model the properties of large chemical molecules without the need for experiments.

She won the NCN Award for two achievements: building a simple and reliable quantum mechanical model of actinide compounds and using quantum information theory to develop innovative methods to study electron structures and track actinide chemical reactions.

When asked about the scientific challenges she has faced in recent months, she replies that she has finally reached a stage where all her efforts have borne fruit: “Together with my research group and collaborators, we built a new software platform from the ground up starting in 2015, incorporating all our theoretical models and tools. In recent months, we have reached the point where we can finally tackle larger problems with more efficient models and implementations. We are still in the early stages, but our initial results are auspicious”, she explains.

Prof. Boguslawski is a winner of the Dirac Medal and currently focuses on working on two grants:  ERC StG2022 and SONATA BIS NCN. “The NCN is an agency that has really invested in my research career and enabled my professional growth. Without the NCN, I wouldn’t be where I am now”, she says.

She returned to Poland in 2015 after 26 years abroad. She had graduated from a PhD programme at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and went on to complete postdoctoral fellowships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and McMaster University in Canada. She currently works at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and is a member of the Polish Young Academy, PAS.

She has also been actively involved in initiatives aimed at levelling the playing field for men and women in science, such as, e.g., “Become a Researcher”, a campaign organised by the Polish Young Academy to encourage female school and university students to pursue research careers. 

A community award

Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska specialises in memory studies, including the objects and cultures of the “Recovered Territories”. She looks at how areas previously inhabited by German and German-speaking communities were resettled in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. Her home institution is the Institute of Slavic Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, fot. Leszek Zych, Polityka She won the NCN Award for defining a new category of resettlement cultures in the research on post-displacement areas.

“I analyse whether, and if so, how, selected areas saw the emergence of new communities, which I refer to as ‘resettlement cultures’. I want to know what the new inhabitants did with things left behind by their predecessors”, she says. She has been looking for answers in archives, through participant observations and via interviews. “I treat the material relics of German cultures in Central Europe as ghosts that force one to interact with the continuing spectral presence of those who lived there before. This helps me understand the motivations of the new settlers and their actions”, she explains.

Ćwiek-Rogalska also won the ERC StG in 2021. She is currently working on an OPUS project funded by the NCN.

She says her research is about the “entanglement of time”, or the way in which the past continues to influence the present and the future. In her ERC project, she proposed a methodology based on hauntology, derived from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida. “Derrida shows that we are practically doomed to inherit; whether we want to or not, we always come after someone, we just exist after someone else, and our inheritance determines the shape of our future”, she adds.

Her study of resettlement cultures is part of a global debate now underway in memory and displacement studies. Ćwiek-Rogalska has completed fellowships at institutions such as Cambridge University, UCLA and Charles University in Prague.

She is also the winner of scholarships and fellowships of the Foundation for Polish Science, the former Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Fulbright Foundation and the National Agency for Academic Exchange. Last year, she also won the Polityka Science Award.

She emphasises how much the NCN Award means to her. “First of all, it is an award that comes from the community; you cannot nominate yourself. For me to be here, someone had to name me as a candidate”, she says.

Therapeutic potential

Prof. Łukasz Opaliński from the University of Wrocław is a biotechnologist and molecular biologist. Together with an interdisciplinary research team, he looks into how healthy and cancerous cells transmit signals and transport macromolecules, and uses that data to design proteins with for potential use in therapies.

Łukasz Opaliński, fot. Dominika Hull-Bruska He won his NCN Award for his investigation of the multivalent interactions between fibroblast growth factor receptors and natural and designed ligands for applications in research and medicine.

“In our research, we are trying to understand how our cells use fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR), which are among the most important cell surface receptors, to communicate in health and illness. We study how FGFR are activated and how their spatial arrangement on the cell surface influences their function and endocytosis. Once we get all this data, we use it to design and produce proteins with strictly defined properties that recognise FGFR and could serve as high-performance drug carriers in targeted cancer therapies”, Opaliński explains.

He argues that molecular biology opens up great growth opportunities for early-stage researchers. “Early-stage researchers can now use the knowledge they acquire through basic research to create concrete applications and products that may change human lives and improve our environment”, he says. A great case in point here are the gene therapies that treat previously incurable diseases, highly effective targeted cancer therapies with minimal side effects, plastic-degrading microorganisms and the highly effective and quickly delivered Covid-19 vaccines.

Prof. Łukasz Opaliński earned his PhD at the University of Groningen and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Fribourg. He has coordinated three NCN projects and one First TEAM FNP grant. He is also a winner of programmes launched by the European Molecular Biology Organization, as well as a Prime Minister’s Award for significant research achievement and the scholarship of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young researchers.

2023 NCN Award winners: Katharina Boguslawski, Łukasz Opaliński, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska