Together with the JPND network (EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research), we are pleased to announce a new call for international research projects to detect early symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases (Linking pre-diagnosis disturbances of physiological systems to Neurodegenerative Diseases).

See the Call Announcement

Funding can be applied for by international consortia consisting of at least three (and no more than seven) research teams from at least three countries participating in the call. The principal investigator of the Polish research ream must be at least a PhD holder.

Countries participating in the call: Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Israel, Canada, Luxembourg, Latvia, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, Hungary, Italy.

The application procedure:

First stage:

• International level: a joint pre-proposal drafted by the Polish research teams in cooperation with the foreign partners (in English) and submitted to the electronic submission system of the JPND network.

Second stage:

• International level: a joint full proposal drafted by the Polish research teams in cooperation with the foreign partners (in English) and submitted to the electronic submission system of the JPND network.

• National level: an NCN proposal concerning the Polish part of the project drafted by the Polish research team and submitted to the NCN electronically via the ZSUN/OSF electronic submission system within 7 days of the joint full proposal submission date (international level).

Call Timeline:

• Submission deadline for joint pre-proposals: 2 March 2021, 3 p.m. CET
• Call for joint full proposals: May 2021
• Submission deadline for joint full proposals: 29 June 2021, 3 p.m. CET
• Submission deadline for NCN proposals in ZSUN/OSF: 6 July 2021
• Call results: October 2021

Under the JPND 2021 call, funds can be applied for to cover salaries for members of the research team, salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and other costs crucial to the research project.

The total funding allocated by the NCN for research tasks to be performed by the Polish research teams under the call is 500 000 EUR.

The National Science Centre has announced the Weave-UNISONO call for excellent international research projects covered by joint proposals submitted to and evaluated by foreign partner institutions acting as the lead agencies

The Weave-UNISONO call has been launched under the Weave programme which aims to simplify the submission and selection procedures of collaborative research projects submitted by researchers from two or three European countries or regions. Weave builds on the Lead Agency Procedure which means that joint international research projects will only be evaluated by a single funding organisation acting as the Lead Agency relevant to one of the teams participating in a project in the call that constitutes a permanent element of such agency’s offer. Therefore, the Weave initiative is open to NCN proposals covering all academic disciplines submitted under the Weave-UNISONO call (announced today) and under the OPUS call (to be announced in September 2020). As of 2021, the National Science Centre will continue to cooperate with the following partner institutions:  Austrian Science Fund – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) from Austria, Czech Science Foundation – Grantová agentura České Republiky (GAČR) from the Czech Republic, Slovenian Research Agency – Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Republike Slovenije (ARRS) from Slovenia, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) from Switzerland, and German Research Foundation – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from Germany.

The Lead Agency is the institution relevant for the coordinating applicant determined by the teams involved in a given proposal. The Lead Agency evaluates proposals and communicates the funding recommendations to the other institutions involved. By simplifying the procedure, Weave seeks to make it easier for researchers to collaborate across borders in the manner they consider best for their respective research programmes, hence applying a brand new approach to the international project funding. 

The Weave initiative has been launched by 12 European research funding organisations, with the support of Science Europe. It is the first time a large network of this scale has developed an initiative of this kind to enable bilateral and trilateral European research projects in all academic disciplines. In order to meet the needs of the future applicants, the Weave participants have developed, with the support of Science Europe, an interactive online tool that researchers can use to determine the relevant funding opportunities for their research projects. It is available at: https://weave-research.net/find-your-funding/ and can be used by anyone wishing to participate in the Weave-UNISONO call. 

NCN funding proposals for research projects carried out under international cooperation and evaluated by the NCN as the Lead Agency can be submitted under the 22^nd edition of the OPUS call to be launched in September 2021.  

We are pleased to announce that a project involving Polish research team has been awarded funding in the call launched within the ERA-NET programme Urban Accessibility and Connectivity (EN-UAC) by the JPI Urban Europe network.

The EN-UAC Call 2019, launched in December 2019, covered the following topics:

• Evolving solutions for an integrated approach on sustainable urban physical mobility and transport, land use and digital connectivity;
• Develop and support the implementation of innovative mobility systems and services with a potential to contribute to sustainable urban mobility;
• Transform and re-organise urban spaces to pave the ground for sustainable urban mobility and accessibility at local level, from the street scale to the district;
• Develop effective policy options for achieving a shift towards sustainable urban accessibility and connectivity;
• Change behaviours and perspectives towards sustainable urban accessibility and connectivity.

Within the call, applicants have submitted 86 proposals. Over EUR 19 million have been granted to 15 research projects.

Project with Polish research team awarded within the EN-UAC Call 2019:

ITEM: Inclusive Transition towards Electric Mobility. The applicants: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Heksagon Research Sp. z o.o. Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Aleksandra Lis - Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The project will involve research teams from the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.

The implementation of research projects funded within the call will start in early 2021.

More information and the full list of the projects recommended for funding are available on the JPI Urban Europe website.

Congratulations to the laureates!

National Science Centre wish You Happy Holidays and best wishes for a wonderful New Year

The National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) and the National Science Centre are pleased to invite researchers and entrepreneurs to submit their research proposals to the fifth call under the TANGO Joint Undertaking. A total budget of 30 million PLN is available this time to support the development of technologies based on basic research findings.

See the announcement

The proposals can be submitted to the NCBR, only electronically, between 1 February and 30 June 2021, divided into two rounds.

The idea behind TANGO is to build bridges between basic research and its practical applications. The National Science Centre and the National Centre for Research and Development are reaching out to innovators whose basic research, i.e. empirical or theoretical endeavours undertaken to gain new knowledge of the foundations of phenomena and observable facts, without any direct commercial use, have an especially high implementation potential.

“Cooperation between researchers and entrepreneurs ultimately serves the common good: it bolsters our economy and enhances the level of innovation in Polish science all at the same time. Many basic research findings can and do find applications in response to key challenges facing Poland, including in the areas of healthcare, environment, and technology. Through the TANGO programme, we want to support such ideas so that they can be developed and applied more quickly to generate tangible economic benefits”, says Przemysław Czarnek, the Polish Minister of Education and Science.

The fifth edition of the TANGO scheme is open to academic and research centres and research and industry consortia that conduct proof-of-concept work, industrial research and development based on the findings of basic research previously funded by the National Science Centre. No limits as to the subject matter of the study apply.

“Through the initiative undertaken together with the National Science Centre, we wish to boost the degree of commercialisation of technologies developed on the basis of research findings”, says Dr inż. Wojciech Kamieniecki, Director of the National Centre for Research and Development. “We have no doubts that this is the right direction. The results of the TANGO programme will be known in a few years, when we have counted the number of patents secured on the basis of completed projects and, especially, the number of research findings implemented and used in actual economic activity”, he adds.

Get on track to success!

The budget of the TANGO 5 call is 30 million PLN. Funding may be requested under one of three tracks (A, B, C), depending on the research stage of the initial project.

The initial project is a research project in the field of basic research. The schemes under which initial projects in Tracks A and C may be funded include all domestic and international calls launched by the National Science Centre, except ETIUDA, FUGA, UWERTURA and MINIATURA. To qualify for Track B, the project must be funded under the first, second, third or fourth (Track A only) TANGO scheme.

The differences between the tracks also have to do with the objective, the addressees and the scope of funded activities:

• Track A – the objective is to find an industrial partner interested in further project implementation under Track B. The proposal may be submitted by research centres. The funding of max. 250 thousand PLN per project will go towards proof-of-concept and R&D work. The total budget of Track A is 6 million PLN.
• Track B – is open to applicants who have already found an industrial partner within the framework of the TANGO programme. Proposals can only be submitted by consortia made up of academic or research organisations and enterprises, headed by an academic or research organisation. The funding of max. 3 million PLN will go towards industrial research and development work. The total budget of Track B is 6 million PLN.
• Track C – is targeted at entities that have found an industrial partner outside of the TANGO programme. Proposals can only be submitted by consortia made up of academic or research organisations (leader) and enterprises. The funding of max. 3 million PLN, will go towards industrial research, development and proof-of-concept work. The total budget of Track C is 18 million PLN.

The prerequisite for funding under Tracks B and C is that the applicants commit themselves to implementing the results of the project.

In accordance with the programme objectives, the merit-based review performed by experts will consider issues such as market demand and implementation profitability. Other important criteria will have to do with the objective of the project, intellectual property rights, implementation potential and the innovative and competitive edge of project results.

“Our many years of cooperation with the National Centre for Research and Development within the framework of the TANGO call are a bow to the demand of our grantees for a fast track to implement the results they have obtained in their basic research projects”, says Professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the National Science Centre. “It makes it possible for results with a high application potential to be used much sooner in the service of the national economy and the further growth of Polish science.”

We are pleased to announce the first results of the international CEUS-UNISONO call for bi- and trilateral research projects conducted by teams from Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland, organised in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP) within the framework of the multilateral CEUS programme. The first winner is Dr hab. Małgorzata Pilot from the Museum and Institute of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her project was recommended for funding following a merit-based review at the Austrian agency, FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung).

Ranking list

Dr hab. Pilot was awarded nearly 1.2 million PLN to carry out a project entitled Testing the domestication syndrome hypothesis in free-ranging dogs. She will do so in cooperation with Sarah Marshall from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology in Vienna. This Polish-Austrian research collaboration within a single project will make it possible to test the “domestication syndrome” hypothesis very comprehensively, including its behavioural, morphological and genetic aspects, and thus study the relationship between genetic variability and the behavioural and morphological traits of free-ranging dogs. The findings of the project will expand our knowledge of the genetic mechanisms of mammalian evolution.

The CEUS-UNISONO grant may go towards funding research team salaries, scholarships for students and PhD students, purchase or construction of research equipment and other necessary project-related expenses. The total budget of the call equals 20 million PLN and it is targeted at Polish research teams planning to join up with one (in the case of bilateral projects) or two (in the case of trilateral projects) selected partner teams in order to submit a funding proposal for a basic research project in any discipline of science. The principal investigator of the Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree; the principal investigator of the partner research team must meet the requirements of its own partner agency in this respect. Projects may be planned for a period of 24 or 36 months and in the case of research projects to be carried out jointly with research teams from Austria this can also be 48 months.

The CEUS-UNISONO call is organised in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure, with proposals being accepted on a rolling basis until 31 December 2020. Results are announced within 12 months from the day of submission; the ranking lists will be successively published here.

On 21 December, the NCN Council composed of the new members held its first meeting during which Professor Jacek Kuźnicki was appointed its new President. The meeting was attended by Dr Anna Budzanowska, Under-Secretary of State for the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

Professor Kuźnicki has been a member of the NCN Council since 2018. During the last term of office of the Council, he chaired the Committee for International Cooperation. Professor Kuźnicki is the Head of the Laboratory of Neurodegeneration at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw. Since 2004, he has been a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests are focused on neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases, calcium dyshomeostasis and the role of STIM proteins in store-operated calcium entry (SOCE) in neurons. He is a winner of many awards and prizes, such as the Officer’s and Knight’s Crosses of Polonia Restituta, Professorial Subsidy Program Award from the Foundation for Polish Science (2004-2007), Prime Minister’s Award for Scientific Achievements and Crystal Brussels Prize for outstanding FP7 achievements in the individual category. He has been a  member of many organizations and societies in Poland and abroad, such as the International Advisory Board of the Małopolska Centre of Biotechnology at the Jagiellonian University, COST Action BM1406 Management Committee, International Expert Council of the Research and Education Centre in Ukraine, Society for Neuroscience, PTBioch. A honorary Head of the Program Board at the Centre for Innovative Bioscience Education (BioCEN) and Board of the BioEducation Foundation.

The new President has established the following committees within the Council: Committee for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (K-1) chaired by Professor Krystyna Bartol, Committee for Physical Sciences and Engineering (K-2) chaired by Professor Grzegorz Karch and Committee for Life Sciences (K-3) chaired by Professor Jakub Fichna.

Pursuant to NCN Council Resolution no 104/2020 of 30 September 2020, the submission of NCN proposals under the CEUS-UNISONO call will be closed on 31 December 2020, 4 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE: NCN proposals processed in the ZSUN/OSF system from 30 September 2020 inclusive, may include research projects to be carried out by the Polish research teams from 2020 onwards.  If the funding decision by the NCN Director is taken in 2021, the applicants may incur pre-financing costs from their own resources before the funding agreement is executed by the NCN, the applicant and the principal investigator. Such pre-financing costs shall be deemed eligible from the date the funding decision by the NCN Director becomes final until the date the research project is completed. 

Furthermore, from the commencement of the work on the NCN proposal in ZSUN/OSF, the Polish research team shall have 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and send it to the NCN, after which date the proposal shall be disabled for editing. In this case, if the Polish research team has not sent its proposal to the NCN, a new proposal must be drafted and completed in ZSUN/OSF (whereas, for such NCN proposals, the Polish research teams may plan their research projects in the ZSUN/OSF submission system starting from 2022).

Cooperation between NCN, FWF, GAČR and ARRS aimed at funding  bilateral and trilateral research projects in all research areas carried out jointly by research teams from Poland, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic will be continued in the framework of the lead agency procedure from the beginning of 2021 within the Weave initiative. More information on Weave:  Weave website and Weave pre-announcement.  

Today, 12 national research funding organisations, with the support of Science Europe, launch Weave, a cross-European initiative to fund and support excellent international research projects. It is the first time a large network of this scale has developed an initiative of this kind to enable bilateral and trilateral scientific cooperation in Europe.

Weave aims to simplify the submission and selection procedures of collaborative research proposals involving researchers from up to three European countries or regions with a single evaluation. It makes use of existing national or regional funding programmes, through which research projects will be financed. It seeks to make it easier for researchers to collaborate across borders. It also has ambitions to increase the capacity of researchers to freely determine the composition, focus and content of their projects.

Weave builds on the Lead Agency Procedure, through which a single funding organisation evaluates proposals put forward by an international team of researchers and communicates the funding recommendation to the other funders involved. In practice, the researchers choose a coordinating applicant, who submits the joint proposal to the respective Weave funding organisation in their country or region.

“We fully support the Weave initiative, and its effort to promote bilateral and trilateral scientific cooperation within Europe,” said Lidia Borrell-Damián, Science Europe Secretary General. “Innovative projects like Weave strongly contribute to strengthening international research collaboration and the realisation of the European Research Area.”

The Weave signatories have developed, with the support of Science Europe, an interactive online tool that researchers can use to determine the relevant funding opportunities for their projects.

As of 2021, the National Science Centre will continue to cooperate with the following partner institutions within the framework of WEAVE:

• Austrian Science Fund – Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) from Austria,
• Czech Science Foundation – Grantová agentura České Republiky (GAČR) from the Czech Republic,
• Slovenian Research Agency – Javna agencija za raziskovalno dejavnost Republike Slovenije (ARRS) from Slovenia,
• Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) from Switzerland, and
• German Research Foundation – Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from Germany.

The NCN is intending to extend the cooperation in the nearest future to include other research funding institutions to participate in the WEAVE scheme.

At the NCN, the WEAVE call for NCN proposals covering all academic disciplines will be carried out in two separate calls, depending on the lead institution (a foreign partner institution or the NCN), i.e.:

• under the WEAVE-UNISONO call for NCN proposals, in the case of which joint proposals will be submitted to and evaluated by the foreign partner institutions acting as the lead agencies (in 2021: FWF, GAČR, ARRS, SNSF or DFG); more information on the terms of the call will be available on the NCN’s website on 4 January 2021;
• under the September edition of the OPUS call for NCN funding proposals for research projects carried out pursuant to the LAP cooperation and evaluated by the NCN as the lead agency.   

Contact:

• weave@ncn.gov.pl

The results of the POLS call, co-funded from the Norway Grants, are now in. Foreign researchers will receive more than 30.5 million PLN in funding for research projects to be carried out in Polish research centres.

POLS is a scheme designed to support researcher mobility, implemented in the form of small grants awarded to international researchers who wish to conduct their research in Poland. The arrival of both well-established and promising researchers with at least a PhD degree is expected to contribute to strengthening the research potential of Polish institutions. The grants (ranging from 100 to 200 thousand euro) can go towards the costs of research team salaries, equipment depreciation or purchase, materials and services, research trips and conferences, as well as other project-related expenses. The projects may take 12 or 24 months to complete. In justified cases, their duration can be extended, but they must all be completed before 30 April 2024.

The call attracted 99 proposals totalling more than 74 million PLN, 39 of which were recommended for funding: 21 in physical sciences and engineering (ST), 8 in life sciences (NZ) and 10 in the arts, humanities and social sciences (HS). In total, the winners will receive more than 30.5 million PLN, 85% of which will be funded from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and 15% from domestic sources. The POLS call encompassed all disciplines of science, as specified in the list of NCN panels, with a special emphasis on polar research and social science studies. The final ranking lists of recommended projects feature three polar research proposals and ten social science projects.

The proposals were reviewed by international expert panels. Three panels were appointed, one for each group of sciences (HS, NZ, ST), and researchers from Poland and Norway were barred from the review process. Each project was evaluated by three experts. The final list of successful projects was approved by the “Basic Research” Programme Committee, while the funding decision was issued by the NCN Director.

“The Programme Committee appreciated the high quality of the proposals and considers the call a success, despite initial fears that it might be difficult to attract excellent international researchers to Polish research centres. At least ten more projects fully deserved to receive funding but, unfortunately, our budget proved insufficient”, says Professor Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director.

The results of the POLS call

POLS is one of three calls funded under the third edition of the EEA and Norway Grants 2014-2021 within the framework of the “Research” programme, in which the NCN serves as the operator responsible for basic research, with an allocation of 40% of its budget of more than 129 million euro. The “Research” programme is designed to support Polish science by, for instance, giving it an international dimension, boosting the effectiveness of EU and ERC applications, and intensifying cooperation between science, business and society.

We also wish to announce that the decisions concerning submitted proposals, both those accepted and those rejected, will be dispatched today in electronic form to the address of the Electronic Inbox (ESP ePUAP) provided in the application from. Should you fail to receive your decision, please verify that the ESP address you provided is correct. If not, contact the person in charge of your proposal, as listed in the ZSUN/OSF system.