We would like to invite all researchers to participate in SHENG¹ – a new funding opportunity for joint Polish-Chinese research teams to be launched by the National Science Centre (NCN) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The programme aims to support research projects in all fields of the Natural, Engineering, Life and Management sciences.Polish applicants can submit proposals in all areas of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering and selected areas of Social Sciences (all subpanels of HS4, HS6_1, HS6_2, HS6_3, HS6_4, HS6_5, HS6_6, HS6_7, HS6_13, HS6_14).

Within the SHENG scheme, the NCN and NSFC will fund only projects involving basic research.

• Call announcement: 15th June 2018
• Call deadline: 17th September 2018
• Results: March 2019
• Start of joint research projects: June 2019 (Polish side), July 2019 (Chinese side)

A complete version of the call documents will be made available on the website in June 2018.

Eligibility

General requirements

• Only projects involving basic research will be funded.
• A Principal Investigator (PI) may submit only one proposal under the same call.
• Research project duration: 36 months.
• All costs must be eligible according to the national eligibility requirements.

Country specific requirements

Poland

• Eligible Host Institutions in Poland: academic or research organisations, research consortia, research networks and organisational units within institutions of higher education that do not constitute their basic organisational units, research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences, academic research centres shared by higher education institutions, scientific libraries, other legal entities established in the territory of the Republic of Poland.
• Grants that are considered state aid will not be offered.
• The Polish Principal Investigator (PI) must hold at least a PhD degree to submit a proposal.
• The budget of the Polish part of the project must be at least 250 000 PLN.

China

• Eligible Host Institutions in China – please refer to NSFC regulations.
• The budget of the Chinese part of the project must not exceed 2 000 000 RMB.

Application process

A complete proposal (consisting of the joint project description in English and the CVs of both PIs and Co-investigators in English) should be submitted by the Polish applicant via the ZSUN/OSF submission system which can be found at https://osf.opi.org.pl by September 17th, 2018, together with all necessary documents conforming to the formal requirements set out in the call documentation.

Chinese PIs should submit all documents (including the complete proposal consisting of the joint project description in English and the CVs of both PIs and Co-investigators in English) required by the NSFC via the NSFC electronic submission system by September 17th, 2018.

Proposal review and evaluation procedure

All proposals will be reviewed by both organisations separately. Proposals will be subject to an eligibility check and peer review.

Only proposals which have been declared eligible by the NCN and NSFC will be peer reviewed.

At the NCN, the eligibility check of proposals will be carried out by the NCN Coordinators. The peer review will be performed by NCN Expert Teams and by External Reviewers.

At the NCN, the peer review will be carried out in two stages:

• Stage I – a preliminary evaluation will take place on the basis of data provided in the proposal by the External Reviewers other than the members of the Expert Team.
• Stage II – a final evaluation will be carried out on the basis of data provided in the proposal and the external reviews by the Expert Team, selected by NCN Research Council.

The proposal evaluation will take into account in particular:

1. the research achievements of the Polish and Chinese PI, including their research portfolio,
2. the quality of the research or tasks to be performed,
3. the innovative nature of the project,
4. the impact of the research carried out on the development of the discipline,
5. the added value of bilateral cooperation,
6. justification of the costs requested,
7. the feasibility of the project.

Support will be granted for those proposals where both the NCN and NSFC recommend funding.

Allocation of funds

Funds for Polish research teams will be allocated on the basis of the decisions issued by the Director of the NCN. Funds for Chinese research teams will be allocated according to NSFC regulations.

Contact

Poland, NCN:

• dr Marta Buchalska, tel. +48 12 341 9158 (Physical Sciences and Engineering)
• dr Katarzyna Jarecka–Stępień, tel. + 48 12 341 9160 (Social Sciences)
• dr Jerzy Frączek, tel. + 48 12 341 9165 (Life Sciences)
• dr Magdalena Godowska, tel. +48 12 341 9016 (General inquiries)
• dr Aneta Pazik, tel. +48 12 341 9017 (General inquiries)

China, NSFC:

• Wencong Li, tel. 86 10 6232 7014

¹The sheng (also spelt as cheng in Encyclopedia Britannica) is a Chinese mouth-blown free reed instrument consisting of vertical pipes. It is a polyphonic instrument and enjoys increasing popularity as a solo instrument.

On the 5^th April 2018 in Prague prof. Zbigniew Błocki, director of the National Science Centre (NCN) and prof. Klement Tockner, President of Austrian Science Fund (FWF), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the NCN and the FWF. This bilateral agreement lays the cornerstone of work on a future joint funding opportunity for Polish-Austrian research teams.

A new call for Polish-Austrian research projects to be announced in late 2018 will target researchers in all fields of science and the humanities. The FWF will act as a lead agency responsible for carrying out merit-based evaluation.

Signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the NCN and FWF is a step towards strengthening cooperation between funding agencies from Central European Countries (for more information please refer to: Towards a cooperation between funding agencies in Central Europe).

On 28th March in Beijing, the National Science Centre signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to establish a new bilateral funding opportunity for Polish-Chinese theoretical research projects. Managed jointly with the NSFC, the new funding initiative will be yet another bilateral programme of the National Science Centre. Grants will be awarded to Polish-Chinese projects in the field of Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Engineering, as well as selected disciplines in Social Sciences. Detailed terms and conditions of the call will be announced in June 2018.

We hope that the new Polish-Chinese programme will attract similar attention as our previous bilateral calls. The choice of partner was far from accidental. Cooperation with China, a country of vibrant economic and scientific activity, will no doubt benefit Polish academia, explains Professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the National Science Centre.

The signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was held on 28th March at the NSFC office in Beijing. Poland was represented by Professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the National Science Centre, Professor Janusz Janeczek, Chairman of the NCN Council, and Justyna Woźniakowska and Magdalena Godowska, representatives of the International Cooperation Office. Professor Xie Xincheng, Vice-President for International Affairs, signed the MoU on behalf of the NSFC. The ceremony was also attended by Natalia Popczyk from the Polish Embassy in Beijing.

We are pleased to announce that three projects, involving researchers from Poland, have been awarded funding within the Sustainable Urbanisation Global Initiative (SUGI) Food-Water-Energy Nexus call for proposals, organised by JPI Urban Europe and Belmont Forum.Polish researchers will be involved in 3 of 15 awarded projects and their total budget sums up to EUR 625 222:

• FEW-meter - an integrative model to measure and improve urban agriculture towards circular urban metabolism coordinated by dr Lidia Katarzyna Poniży (the leader of the international consortium); the Polish consortium was formed by Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań University of Life Sciences, City of Gorzow Wielkopolski, the Polish Allotment Gardeners Federation – Gorzow Wielkopolski Branch;
• CRUNCH Climate Resilient Urban Nexus Choices: operationalising the Food Water Energy Nexus, with the participation of dr Joanna Bach-Głowińska; Gdansk University of Technology and City of Gdansk;
• Creating Interfaces: Building capacity for integrated governance at the food-water-energy-nexus in cities on the water with the participation of dr Wojciech Goszczyński; Nicolaus Copernicus University and Sustainable Development Lab.

The SUGI projects will involve 134 researchers and project partners from business, public authorities and civil society in 20 countries. In addition to formal partners many projects will also involve extensive groups of local stakeholders.

The new call “Sustainable and Liveable Cities and Urban Areas” organized by JPI Urban Europe and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) was launched in January 2018. The call inviting interdisciplinary Sino-European consortia includes three thematic areas:

• Reduction of the adverse environmental impact of cities, paying special attention to the quality of air, water and soil, and municipal and other waste management;
• Access to safe, affordable, and sustainable housing, transportation and basic services; and
• Integrated policies towards inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change and resilience to disasters.

We would like to invite researchers to submit proposals under M-ERA.NET 2 call for proposals. The call targets research in the following topics:

• Multiscale modeling for materials engineering and processing (M3EP)
• Innovative surfaces, coatings and interfaces
• High performance composites
• Functional materials
• New strategies for advanced material-based technologies in health applications
• Materials for additive manufacturing

The timetable for applications is:

• Pre-proposals to be submitted: 12th of June 2018, 12:00 Central European Time,
• Shortlisted applicants to submit full proposals 8th of November 2018, 12:00 Central European Time.

Applications must be submitted by at least 3 partners from at least 2 different countries participating in the call.

Countries participating in the call

Both the National Science Centre (NCN) and the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) are members of the M-ERA network. Applicants whose projects meet basic research criterion (TRL 1-4) can apply to the NCN, and they do not have to involve an industrial partner. Researchers whose project start from TRL 3-6 and achieve TRL 5-8 can apply to the NCBR and the involvement of an industrial partner is mandatory.

Detailed information about M-ERA.NET 2 Call

Additional information for NCN applicants

1. According to UNISONO (please see pp. 2-3), the budget of the project is subject to evaluation at the pre-proposal stage. Therefore, the leaders of Polish research teams are requested to send the budget table of the Polish part of the project to: anna.kotarba@ncn.gov.pl, no later than June 12, 2018.
2. On the full proposal stage Polish applicants must register their applications in the ZSUN/OSF submission system (UNISONO application). The application includes the following budget table.
3. We strongly encourage all applicants to read information on eligible costs included in the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO, s. 5-12).
4. If one international project includes partners from two different Polish Host Institutions, these institutions must apply as a consortium. Each Host Institution comprising the consortium has a separate budget, but the limit on the remuneration, referred to in paragraph 2.1.2 of the above mentioned document, applies to the consortium as a whole [please see UNISONO, p. 8-9: 2.1.2 a) i b)]. Please note that Polish consortia have higher limits on the remuneration.
5. Budget of the Polish part of the research project in the ZSUN/OSF system should be given in PLN (1 EUR= 4,2024 PLN).
6. We invite all researchers who plan to submit applications within M-ERA.NET 2 call to contact the NCN.

Contact

Weronika Bieniasz, tel. 12 341 9156

Anna Kotarba, tel. 12 341 9091

The National Science Centre invites researchers to submit proposals under OPUS 15 and PRELUDIUM 15 calls launched on 15^th March. The former offers funding for  research projects, including purchase or construction of the necessary research equipment. The latter gives early stage pre-doctoral researchers an opportunity to make a debut as principal investigator in a research project. Researchers will compete for the total sum of over € 76.5 million in funding.

OPUS 15 is addressed to researchers at any stage of their career and  offers funding for personnel costs and the costs of research, such as the purchase of equipment, software, consumables, subcontracting/outsourcing, business trips and research visits necessary for the completion of research tasks. Young investigators employed in the OPUS research teams may be granted scholarships under the scheme.

The research projects under the OPUS programme may last 12, 24 or 36 months. There is no cap on funding; however, NCN reviewers assess if the project’s budget calculation is error-free and if the indicated costs are adequate to the tasks to be carried out in the project.

The total budget for the OPUS 15 call amounts to over € 69.5 million.

OPUS 15: call text

PRELUDIUM 15 is a funding opportunity dedicated to researchers embarking on a career in research who will not yet have earned a PhD by 15^th June 2018. The programme gives early stage researchers an opportunity to work independently as principal investigator in a research project that lasts one, two or three years. The maximum funding for a single project  is € 16,234, € 32,468 and € 48,702,  respectively. The PRELUDIUM research team may include up to three investigators, but individuals holding a habilitation degree or professorship may act only in the capacity of the principal investigator’s supervisor. The budget of the call’s 15^th edition amounts to nearly € 7 million.

PRELUDIUM 15: call text

The Council of the NCN has introduced a number of important modifications in the proposal templates.

Both the short description of the project, to be evaluated by members of the Expert Team at the first stage of merit-based evaluation, and the project abstract, will now be written in English, so that reviewers without a fluent command of the Polish language will be able to participate in the evaluation process from the very beginning, rather than join in only at the second stage, as it has been so far.

Because of the impending EU General Data Protection Regulation, new types of declarations of consent to having one’s personal data processed have been added to all proposals submitted to the NCN.

Proposals should be submitted solely in the electronic form no later than 15^th June 2018. The electronic proposal submission system ZSUN/OSF  for the OPUS 15 and PRELUDIUM 15 will be available at a later date.

During its session held in March, the Council of the National Science Centre, decided to change the timeline of the National Science Centre’s calls in 2018. The launch of the SONATA call for proposals has been moved to September 2018. A detailed schedule is available in the Call timeline section.

On the 7^th and 8^th of March the Council of the NCN held its session. On the first day the Council’s committees for appeals, regulations and procedures, and Committees K-1, K-2 and K-3 convened. On the second day, the plenary debate took place, with members of the Council and authorities of the NCN.

In the first part of the meeting, members of the Council issued a positive opinion on the Centre’s financial report for the past year in resolution no 14/2018. In resolution no 15/2018, the Council approved the report on the completion of the NCN’s statutory tasks in 2017, which included information on the degree to which specific tasks had been accomplished by the Centre, supported with the tasks’ evaluation and an assessment of their impact on the advancement of science. All documents reviewed by the Council will be presented to the Minister of Science and Higher Education for approval.

The focus of the plenary debate for the Council was to determine the conditions for the 15^th edition of the OPUS and PRELUDIUM calls. As a result, research projects granted funding under these schemes will receive the aggregate sum of more than € 69.5 million for OPUS and nearly € 7 million for PRELUDIUM. In accordance with former decisions by the Council, applicants in the upcoming edition will be required to write the abstracts and both the short and long description of the project in English, so that foreign reviewers will be able to participate in the evaluation process from the very beginning

The Council also discussed the proposals to change the regulations on the mode of granting financial resources for the completion of tasks funded by the National Science Centre as regards research projects, post-doctoral fellowships and doctoral scholarships, finally to be adopted as resolution no 16/2018. Following a discussion of the extant restrictions on applying for NCN grants, the Council decided to uphold the rule stipulating that a person already acting as principal investigator to more than two NCN-funded projects or acting as PI to two projects, with another project pending evaluation, may not submit a proposal as principal investigator. Members of the Council decided that the principle would not apply to international calls operated by the NCN as bi- or multilateral cooperation. After a prolonged discussion regarding the criteria of exclusion for proposals rejected in the preceding edition of the OPUS and PRELUDIUM calls, it was agreed that it would only be allowed to submit the same proposal once within 12 months. The limitation will not apply to proposals which: in the previous edition of the calls did not make it through the eligibility check, were not approved for the second stage of the merit-based evaluation solely for failing to meet the call’s requirements, for ineligible costs or submission to the wrong panel, as well as those which were approved for the second stage of the evaluation but received no funding recommendation.

With a view to meet the expectations of the applicants and the Centre’s efforts to facilitate call procedures and grant implementation, the Council agreed to apply modifications to the texts of a number of provisions in the regulations as regards eligible costs, the budget for full-time and additional salaries and the budget for scholarships. The changes will enable the applicants to plan their costs more effectively, which will undoubtedly have positive consequences for grant implementation. The OPUS 15 and PRELUDIUM 15 calls will be announced on 15^th March 2018, with specific terms set out in resolutions no 17/2018 and 18/2018.

In the further stages of the session, members of the Council debated over future editions of the SONATA, SONATA BIS, MAESTRO and HARMONIA calls. After the discussion on the SONATA call, in view of the opinions of NCN coordinators on the previous call, the Council decided to introduce changes in the call’s timeline. It was agreed that the SONATA call will be launched in September 2018 alongside the next edition of OPUS and PRELUDIUM. Evaluation of proposals received under the call will be subject to discussion at future sessions of the Council. With regard to the closing of the first edition of the DAINA call, and with due consideration for the candidates proposed by the Research Council of Lithuania (RCL), the Council of the NCN in resolution no 19/2018 selected the members of the Expert Teams who will review the proposals of the Polish-Lithuanian research projects.

In the part of the session devoted to international affairs information was presented concerning plans and actions for the Centre’s bilateral cooperation with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and a possible launch of a joint call for Polish-Austrian research projects. The session then proceeded with the decision, by resolution no 20/2018, with due consideration for the opinions of individual Committees, to contribute € 500,000 to research projects carried out by Polish teams under a programme operated by the CHIST-ERA network, supporting information and communication sciences and technologies. An equal amount (€ 500,000) was contributed, by resolution no 21/2018, to the funding of Polish research teams in the NORFACE action for projects in social sciences. Polish projects carried out within the M-ERA network, supporting research in material science and engineering, will receive the sum of  € 300,000, the Council stated in resolution no 22/2018.

The session concluded with a positive opinion on the report on the tasks carried out by NCN coordinators in 2017, drafted in resolution no 23/2018. Members of the Council issued their opinion on the final reports on the completion of research projects taken over by the Centre from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in resolution no 24/2018, and in resolution no 25/2018 they issued an evaluation of final reports on the completion of research projects funded by the National Science Centre.

The CHIST-ERA Network has defined initial topics for the Call for proposals that will be announced in October 2018:

• Analog Computing for Artificial Intelligence
• Intelligent Computation for Dynamic Networked Environments

The general topics will be further developed  during the CHIST-ERA Conference 2018 in Helsinki, June 19-21 which will bring together scientists and CHIST-ERA representatives in order to identify and formulate promising scientific and technological challenges at the frontier of research with a view to refine the scientific content of the Call. The conference is open to the research community.

For details please see the programme website.

Please note that this announcement is for information purposes only. It does not create any obligation for the CHIST-ERA consortium nor for any of the participating funding organisations. The official call announcement, to be published later, shall prevail.

NCN contact:

• dr Jakub Gadek, tel. +48 12 341 9152
• Marlena Wosiak, tel. +48 12 341 9093

The NCN’s first MINIATURA call for single research activities instrumental in basic research has attracted a truly massive response. In the recently concluded programme, funding was granted to 828 researchers, the resources allocated reaching the sum of € 7 million. The initiative sought to support the researchers who have had no experience as beneficiaries of the NCN’s grant system.

The MINIATURA funding opportunity is addressed to holders of a doctorate degree that has been obtained within 12 years of submitting the proposal, who have not acted as principal investigator to a research project, and have not been NCN-grantees. A prospective candidate in the call must be employed by the host institution applying for the grant.

Research activities in the MINIATURA 1 would be funded with sums from ca € 1,200 to ca € 12,000, and their duration cannot exceed 12 months. Salaries for researchers, scholarships or funding the purchase of research equipment were not covered by the funding in this scheme. Eligible for funding were only actions instrumental in the completion of basic research, such as pilot or preliminary studies, research travels and conferences, library surveys, fellowships or consultations.

− We are happy about the large response to the MINIATURA 1 call. Unfortunately, contrary to our expectations, the programme fell somewhat short of its intended role, i.e. that of support and encouragement to researchers from smaller research centres. In MINIATURA, just as in our other calls, we have seen the dominance of the centres from the provinces of Masovia, Lesser Poland and Greater Poland. Of course, we are happy that the list of the host institutions that have carried off the largest number of “small grants” includes also universities from Olsztyn or Lublin, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the NCN.

Initially the resolution by the Council of the NCN of 10^th November 2016 set the budget of the call at ca € 4.64 million. Since the demand proved to be much higher than expected, in October 2017 the Council decided to increase funding by ca € 2.32 million. This notwithstanding, in one month nearly 70 % of the total of ca € 7 million was committed, while the sum called for in the pending applications was manifold in excess of the remaining resources of MINIATURA 1. This prompted the decision to discontinue the call earlier than initially planned, i.e. on 10^th November.

− The scale of participation in the MINIATURA 1 call has outpaced our expectations. While it shows that with this initiative we have responded to a real demand on the part of the research community, we can also see the need for improvements, since our primary objective is to encourage universities from the regions so far underrepresented in NCN calls to step up their participation and win more grants. Owing to an earlier conclusion of the call, we do not intend to introduce any substantial changes to the MINIATURA 2 programme. Nevertheless, the Council of the NCN has worked for a good time now on significant modifications to the terms of the call, which we mean to apply to MINIATURA’s third edition, said prof. Janusz Janeczek, the Chair of the Council of the NCN.

It is believed that such a massive response to the call was caused in no small degree by a number of improvements in the simplified call procedure and evaluation of proposals. New features of the MINIATURA call included: a continuous call mode, an abbreviated review procedure thanks to which an applicant can receive a funding decision within three months of submitting the application, and the replacement of the customary grant agreements with the General Terms of the Contract, annexed by the applicant to the proposal. These solutions, as well as the replacement of paper proposals with digital-only policy, served to significantly shorten the time of the funding procedure.

Since the publication of the call on 4^th March 2017 until its conclusion on 10^th November 2017 as many as 2,120 proposals were sent to the NCN. 828 of those were recommended for funding, which accounts for 39% of all applications. Laureates of the MINIATURA most often requested funding for preliminary research (520 proposals). The second most popular application type was for pilot studies (87 proposals); 56 applicants requested funding for their research travels, 45 – conferences, and 35 – library surveys. The applicant institutions with the largest number of “small grants” were the Jagiellonian University (51), the University of Lodz (39) and the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn (37).

The launch of MINIATURA’s second edition is planned for April 2018.