Prof. dr hab. Bartosz Brożek - NCN Award winner in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Scientific achievement: Developing an innovative concept of normativity, applicable in law and other normative systems, based on philosophical reasoning and the achievements of cognitive and evolutionary sciences
Bartosz Brożek is a lawyer, philosopher and cognitive scientist. He graduated in law (2001) and philosophy (2001). In 2003, he earned a PhD in legal science, and in 2007, another PhD in philosophy, followed by a habilitation degree in law; he became a full professor in 2013. Since 2015, he has worked as a full professor at the Department of the Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics of the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University. He is also a member of the Copernicus Centre for Interdisciplinary Research.
His research interests include legal theory and philosophy; the philosophy of mind, language and science; legal, moral and mathematical cognition; theories of rationality; normativity; relations between natural science and theology; as well as argumentation and negotiation theories. He has authored or co-authored 21 monographs and edited 23 collective volumes and nearly 100 research papers.
Bartosz Brożek is also active in science outreach and research organisation. He is one of the masterminds and organisers of the Copernicus Festival, as well as the initiator and manager of Copernicus College, the first Polish MOOC platform, and the person behind popular science meetings, known as “Big Questions in Kraków” and “The Limits of Science”. He has co-organised several dozen international seminars and conferences.
Bartosz Brożek has also won many prestigious awards and distinctions, such as the Humboldt Research Fellowship, two awards for outstanding research achievements from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Prime Minister’s Award for the best habilitation dissertation, the scholarship of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young researchers, three FNP grants (Mistrz, Homing, Start) and the “Polityka” Research Award.
Dr hab. Joanna Sułkowska - NCN Award winner in Life Sciences
Scientific achievement: Pushing the boundaries of medical knowledge to develop new drugs – research into the structure and dynamics of proteins with non-trivial topologies
Joanna Ida Sułkowska heads an interdisciplinary biological system modelling lab at the Centre for New Technologies at the University of Warsaw and works as an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Chemistry. She wrote her MSc thesis on the properties of highly elastic polymers at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and defended it at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw in 2003. In 2007, she earned a PhD in biophysics with a dissertation focused on the description of the mechanical properties of proteins, which won a best dissertation award at the Department of Physics, PAS. In 2016, she earned a habilitation degree at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw. She spent several years as a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego. She is the author of more than 50 research publications.
Sułkowska conducts interdisciplinary research that combines insights from physics, mathematics, biology and knot theory. In particular, she specialises in molecular and theoretical biophysics. When asked about her greatest research achievement thus far, she talks about her description of protein loops, their formation and the relationship of their structure to biological function. Abnormalities in the function of “looped proteins” may lead to various lifestyle diseases, and untangling their secrets may lead to a breakthrough in the treatment of obesity and even Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
She has won multiple awards for her research, including two from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO – EMBO Installation and YIP grants), grants from the National Science Centre, the Foundation for Polish Science and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Ideas Plus). She is also a winner of the award of the Rector of the University of Warsaw and the Grabowski Award from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw. In 2017, she got an international Unesco-L’Oreal “Rising talent’’ award and a habilitation scholarship within the framework of “L’Oreal Poland for Women and Science”. In 2017, she made the cut for “The Bold 50” list published by Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2018, she won the MocArt award and the Person of the Year 2018 title awarded by RMF Classic radio; she also won the NCN Award.
Sułkowska has delivered may lectures for young people of various ages, e.g. within the framework of the University of Children, the Polish Children’s Fund or a popular science initiative – Jutronauci. She is a mentor in a STEM programme.
Dr hab. Piotr Sankowski - NCN Award winner in Physical Sciences and Engineering
Scientific achievement: Fundamental results in the area of graph algorithms, especially finding associations in graphs
Piotr Sankowski is a professor at the Department of Computer Science of the University of Warsaw, where he defended a PhD dissertation in 2005, followed by a habilitation degree in 2009. In 2009, with a dissertation on solid body theory, he earned yet another PhD degree, this time at the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests focus on the issues of combinatorial optimisation, with a special emphasis on dynamic and stochastic computation, as well as algorithmic engineering.
Sankowski has won three ERC grants: the ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant in 2010, the ERC Proof of Concept Grant in 2015 and the ERC Consolidator Grant in 2017. In 2018, he received the individual Crystal Brussels Award and the NCN Award. He is a co-founder of the MIM Solutions spin-off.