We are pleased to invite researchers interested in applying for the POLONEZ 3 fellowship for a web chat in English, that will be held on the 11^th October 2016 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. During the chat we would be happy to answer all questions regarding the call documentation, the submission system, etc.

All technical details regarding access to the chat will be announced on the NCN website on the 10^th or 11^th October by 12 pm at the latest. We strongly encourage applicants to read the call documentation before joining the chat.

Please read the technical instructions regarding the web chat.

Technical instructions for the POLONEZ 3 info chat

1. You do not have to register to participate in the web chat. Please provide your name and e-mail address in order to join the chat.
2. The language of the web chat interface is determined by your IP-address. If the language of the web chat is other than English, please click on the flag in the upper right corner of the login window and then switch it to English (print screen 1).
3. To participate in the web chat please install the latest Adobe Flash Player plug-in. In order to check the validation of the connection and the compatibility of Adobe flash player please go to the web-chat, give your name and e-mail address and click “Enter”. If you pass the test positively, you will see a brief instruction regarding the web chat. When the web chat becomes active (11^th October, 2 p.m.), you will see the correct chat window. If you have an older version of the plug-in, you will receive an appropriate message to update your Adobe flash player plug-in.
4. In order to maximize the font during the web chat, please click on “gear” icon, then click on “font” and choose the right size, e.g. 14 pt (print screen 2).
5. If you have problems with the connection, please note that the web chat platform uses the port 1935 and the RTMP protocol which must be unblocked in your “firewall”.

We are pleased to announce that four projects involving Polish research teams were selected within an international funding programme on biodiversity, launched by the NCN together with BiodivERsA – a network of European research funding organisations. Funding of over EUR 33 million, including co-funding from the European Commission, was granted to 26 international research projects. 

Among Polish awardees, the biggest amount of funds was granted to the Polish team involved in the ENABLE project: prof. Jakub Kronenberg from the University of Lodz and dr Kinga Krauze from the European Regional Centre for Ecohydrology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Polish researchers together with their peers from Sweden, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands will strive to answer the question of how to effectively use blue and green infrastructure for the sustainable development of cities.

One of the BiodivERsA grantees was also the REPEAT project. The international research team, including scientists from Belgium, Germany, Norway, Romania and Poland, led by dr hab. Wiktor Kotowski from the University of Warsaw will investigate peatland processes responsible for carbon accumulation in fen peatland. Our research is aimed primarily at developing effective methods of restoration of these ecosystems. Processes in peatlands play an important role in climate regulation, as well as nutrients and the water cycle in nature. However, these functions have been degraded by long-term drainage of peatlands. The acronym of our project, “Re-Peat”, stands for the restoration of peat formation – says dr hab. Kotowski.

The BearConnect project involving the Polish team coordinated by prof. Nuria Selva Fernandez and researchers from France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Norway aims to examine the connectivity between populations of brown bears in Europe. This will help answer the question of how the landscape – its structure and the existence of protected and non-protected areas – affects the exchange of individuals and their genes.

And last but not least, BiodivERsA funding was granted to BIOVEINS, a project coordinated by a Belgian research team, with the participation of partners from Estonia, France, Portugal, Switzerland and Poland. Polish scientists led by prof. Piotr Tryjanowski from Poznan University of Life Sciences, together with their peers, will investigate the impact of urbanisation on the world of plants and animals. Their goal is to find patterns of distribution of various organisms in urban space and then to confront these patterns with the parameters of the environment. The results of their study will help city planners provide citizen-friendly urban spaces.

Polish projects funded within the call:

1. BearConnect

Project title: Functional connectivity and ecological sustainability of European ecological networks: a case study with the brown bear

Polish Principle Investigator: dr hab. Nuria Selva Fernandez, Institute of Nature Conservation of the Polish Academy of Sciences 

Partners: dr Wilfried Thuiller, French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France; prof. Niko Balkenhol, Georg-August-University Goettingen, Germany; dr Ancuta Fedorca, National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry “Marin Dracea”, Romania; prof. Andreas Zedrosser, Telemark University College, Norway; dr Luigi Maiorano, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Italy.

2. BIOVEINS

Project title: Connectivity of green and blue infrastructures; living veins for biodiverse and healthy cities

Polish Principal Investigator: prof. Piotr Tryjanowski, Poznań University of Life Sciences

Partners: prof. Roeland Samson, University of Antwerp, Belgium (project leader); dr Pedro Pinho, University of Lisbon, Portugal; dr Muriel Tichit, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), France; prof. Ülo Niinemets, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Estonia; dr Marco Moretti, Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), Switzerland; François Chiron, University of Paris-Sud, France

3. ENABLE

Project title: Enabling green-blue infrastructure in complex social-ecological regions - system solutions to wicked problems

Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Jakub Kronenberg, University of Lodz;

Partners: dr Kinga Krauze, European Regional Centre on Ecohydrology, Poland; prof. Erik Andersson, Stockholm University, Sweden (project leader); Chantal van Ham, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Belgium; prof. Dagmar Haase, Humboldt University, Germany; Sandra Naumann, Ecologic Institute, Germany; Ania Rok, ICLEI, Germany, Dr David Barton, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), Norway; dr Isabelle Anguelovski, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain; prof. Niki Frantzeskaki, DRIFT, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands; prof. Timon McPhearson, The New School, USA.

4. REPEAT

Project title: Restoration and prognosis of peat formation in fens - linking diversity in plant functional traits to soil biological and geochemical processes

Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Wiktor Kotowski, University of Warsaw (project leader)

Partners: dr hab. Hans Joosten, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald, Germany; dr Bente Foereid, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research, Norway; dr Jenica Hanganu, Danube Delta National Institute for Research and Development, Romania; prof. Ruurd Van Diggelen, University of Antwerp, Belgium; prof. Jan Frouz, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic; Vera Marisa Policarpo Coelho, Wetlands International, the Netherlands.

More information about BiodivERsA call

The European Research Council (ERC) has invited European research funding organisations to cooperate in the programme Fellowship Schemes to Visit ERC Grantees, enabling them to participate in an international researcher exchange network with fellowship visits to research teams carrying out projects as ERC grantees in different European countries. The initiative is intended to strengthen the standing of prospective candidates for ERC grants, and offer them an opportunity to gain precious experience of the international research grant system.

As an outcome of cooperation between the National Science Centre and the European Research Council, a new programme, UWERTURA 1, will be launched to fund fellowships in international research teams carrying out ERC-financed projects. The new funding opportunity will be addressed to researchers holding a doctorate degree who plan to apply for ERC research grants. The programme’s aim is to help researchers from Polish institutions successfully apply for European resources, and to increase their share among laureates of ERC grants. Under the UWERTURA 1 scheme, the NCN will finance fellowships of 3 to 6 months in international research teams working on ERC-financed projects, with the reservation that the fellowship beneficiary has to apply for an ERC grant in the next 18 months after the fellowship’s conclusion. The research projects submitted by former fellows to the ERC should be carried out in a Polish research institution.

Alongside the NCN, other participants of the programme Fellowship Schemes to Visit ERC Grantees include research funding agencies from Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia. The first edition of UWERTURA 1 will be announced on 15^th December, with a deadline for submitting proposals set for 15^th March 2017.

More information

We would like to inform all applicants interested in applying for the POLONEZ 3 that the OSF electronic submission system will be opened around the 17^th October.Please see also:

• POLONEZ 3 Guidelines for Applicants
• POLONEZ 3 Instructions on submitting the proposal
• POLONEZ 3 Partner Search Tool

For more information please see: www.ncn.gov.pl/en/polonez

The National Science Centre has opened the 12^th edition of its calls for proposals: OPUS, PRELUDIUM and SONATA, with an aggregate budget of ca € 79 M. Researchers will also have the additional opportunity of applying for grants under two international programmes: the second edition of the BEETHOVEN call for Polish-German projects, and the third edition of the POLONEZ funding opportunity for incoming researchers. Towards international cooperation the Centre has committed ca € 14.4 M.

POLONEZ 3 is a call for proposals that enables researchers from foreign institutions to come to Poland for a research stay of one to two years. Eligible applicants are researchers with a doctoral degree or at least 4 years of full-time research experience, who in the past 3 years have not worked or studied in Poland for more than 12 months. The call is financed under the Horizon 2020 EU Programme for Research and Innovation. The present edition has a budget of ca € 7.2 M.

The bilateral BEETHOVEN 2 call will see changes in comparison to its first edition. In that previous edition, Polish-German research teams carrying out projects in the domain of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences were eligible to apply. This time funding has been secured also for the representatives of selected disciplines within the domain of Physical Sciences and Engineering. The budget of this call, organised jointly with Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), totals ca € 7.2 M.

The first edition of this funding opportunity enjoyed considerable success and allowed for the financing of 17 Polish-German research teams. Now we want to broaden the programme’s scope as we also accept projects in Physical Sciences whilst nearly tripling the budget.  I hope that in the years to come BEETHOVEN will also include other research disciplines, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the National Science Centre. Germany is Poland’s important economic partner, as well as a country of many excellent research centres. Creating conditions for an ever more intensive knowledge exchange with this country seems a natural direction for the development of international operations within the Centre.

In addition to the two international competitions, a call for proposals has been published under three Polish funding schemes, each of them being launched for the twelfth time.

OPUS is the most popular of the NCN funding schemes, addressed to a large group of participants. Applications are open to all researchers regardless of their years of research experience or degree held. The funding received can be directed toward building a research team and the purchase of research equipment. The total sum of funding has been set at nearly € 60 M.

Researchers who begin their academic career, before receiving their doctorate degree, can apply for funding under the PRELUDIUM call. For doctoral candidates, it offers the chance to carry out one's first independent research project. In the twelfth edition of PRELUDIUM, the Centre has adopted a budget of € 7.2 M

SONATA is also a funding opportunity addressed to researchers at the early stages of research activity, although somewhat more experienced. Under this scheme, submissions will be accepted from researchers with a doctorate degree held no longer than 7 years before applying for the grant, i.e. in the years 2009-2016. The pool of funding comes close to € 12 M.

Proposals should be submitted using the OSF electronic submission system (https://osf.opi.org.pl) by 15^th December 2016. The results of OPUS 12, SONATA 12, PRELUDIUM 12 and POLONEZ 3 will be announced by June 2017, while the publication of the results in BEETHOVEN 2 is expected in October 2017.

We are pleased to invite all researchers to submit proposals under Beethoven 2 call for Polish-German research projects in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences as well as selected fields of Physical Sciences. Proposals must be submitted by Polish-German research teams by the 15^th December 2016. Results will be published in October 2017.The call covers the following research disciplines:

The National Science Centre invites researchers to submit proposals under POLONEZ 3 funding opportunity addressed to incoming researchers who would like to carry out basic research in host institutions in Poland.

On September 13^th Science Europe released a short Statement ‘Funding Research in Horizon 2020: Europe’s Most Valuable Strategic Resource’, available here.

Science Europe expresses strong concern that the research funding budget be maximised in Horizon 2020 so that Europe can fully realise its target of becoming a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. Funding for research and innovation in Europe is a critical strategic investment which is essential for Europe’s long-term growth and prosperity.

The National Science Centre as a member of Science Europe supports this call on European policy makers, civil society and citizens to safeguard European research funding, ensuring that it is not treated as a pot from which other initiatives are funded.

In a recently published “Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars” report, Poland has been listed first among the “rising stars of science.” This term is applied to countries whose position in the Nature Index tables has improved dramatically over the past four years.

In the years 2012-2015, Poland’s contribution to the “Nature” index has increased by 34 per cent. The magazine underscores that such a major leap was possible thanks to the creation of the National Science Centre in 2011, an agency which fosters basic research, and the reform of its applied-science counterpart, the National Centre for Research and Development;  both institutions have become pillars of the competitive-grant-based system of funding science. The magazine also mentions the considerable significance of EU funds for the advancement of science in Poland.

Among the 100 “rising stars” with the best quality of research (Top 100 institutions), two Polish universities have been listed: Jagiellonian University (placed 69^th) and the University of Warsaw (96^th). It should be noted that in the ranking of countries from Southern and Eastern Europe (Top 25 institutions/South East Europe), of the 25 research institutions listed as many as 8 are Polish, 3 of which are in the top ten. Jagiellonian University has been ranked first, the University of Warsaw third, and the National Centre for Nuclear Research tenth. Other institutions included in the ranking are the AGH University of Science and Technology, the University of Wrocław, Polish Academy of Sciences, Marie Curie-Skłodowska University and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

We are pleased to announce that the European Commission (EC) has allocated EUR 11.5 million for QuantERA, a program aiming to support research in Quantum Technologies, coordinated by the National Science Centre. It is the largest grant awarded to Poland in the framework program Horizon 2020. The aim of QuantERA is to promote research in Quantum Technologies and create a common European strategy for the development of this field of science. Thanks to the EU co-funding, the NCN along with 31 institutions funding research in Europe will launch a call for international research projects in the field of Quantum Technologies. The call will be announced in the first half of 2017. Its budget will amount to almost EUR 35 million.

Quantum Technologies is a new, fast growing and highly interdisciplinary area of research. It relies on specifically quantum phenomena, such as entanglement, which have only recently been brought under full experimental control. The practical use of these phenomena may not only help us solve much faster important computational problems, but also ensure cryptographic data transmission, with safety guaranteed by the fundamental laws of quantum mechanics. Research in Quantum Technologies may also lead to the development of new generations of sensors with significantly higher sensitivity.

Contact:

Sylwia Kostka, tel. +48 12 341 9018

Anna Plater-Zyberk, tel. +48 12 341 9016