Dr Michał Ślęzak from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT in Wrocław will team up with German scientists for a research project selected under the Weave-UNISONO call. The Polish team will receive more than 2.2. million zlotys in funding.
Dr Michał Ślęzak from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT in Wrocław, together with Dr hab. Mathias Schmidt from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and Dr Nils Gassen from the University of Bonn, Clinical Center, will work on a project entitled “Role of the mitochondrial metabolism of astrocytes in chronic stress”, which seeks to investigate the neurobiological basis for psychiatric disorders. Their key research hypothesis is that chronic stress upsets the metabolism of astrocytes (a type of glial brain cells), which may lead to a dysfunction in neural circuits responsible for affective control. The combination of the skills and knowledge brought in by these three different teams is expected to allow the discovery of new molecular targets for future therapies and better solutions for the treatment of stress-related disorders.
The proposal was evaluated by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in its capacity as the lead agency and the National Science Centre accepted its decision within the framework of the Weave programme.
Weave-UNISONO
The Weave-UNISONO call is the result of multilateral cooperation between research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures for research proposals that bring together researchers from two or three different European countries in any discipline of science.
The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for merit-based review and the others simply accept the result.
Under Weave, partner research teams apply in parallel to the lead agency and their relevant domestic institutions. Their joint proposal must include coherent research programmes and clearly spell out the added value of international cooperation.
The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to carefully read the call text and submit their funding proposals.