“The core of our mission is to fund top basic research. This is so little and yet so much…It would be good if politicians finally recognised the importance of the NCN in the research-funding system”, says Prof. Robert Hasterok, President of the NCN Council, in an interview published by “Forum Akademickie”. Hasterok takes stock of the past 12 months and talks about the future plans of the Council.
Prof. Robert Hasterok, photo by Martyna Mazur
Prof. Hasterok was appointed as the President of the NCN Council in December 2022. The first year of his term has also been a period of particularly heated debate on research funding in Poland. The precarious political and budgetary situation of the National Science Centre has long had a negative impact on the research landscape of the country. In this context, 2023 was truly exceptional, in the negative sense of the word: the Ministry of Education and Science explicitly signalled its intention to shut down the NCN. Due to the institution’s frozen budget, the success rate in its recently concluded calls dropped to an all-time low: 8.06% for OPUS and 10.73% for PRELUDIUM. Never before in its history has the NCN been able to fund such a small proportion of submitted projects.
“The political pressures on the NCN were, frankly, unprecedented and I hope this will never happen again in the future. One of the most important values we stand by is independence. And I must say that out of all the state-run grant agencies in Poland, we are the only one to have remained independent until the end”, emphasises Prof. Hasterok, and then adds it was only possible thanks to the unprecedented level of backing and support the NCN received from the community. He declares that the NCN Director and Council are hoping to be able to hold a meeting with the minister of science as soon as possible to present the current situation in basic research funding in Poland and persuade him to increase the budget of the NCN. “Or else, not long from now, we will see its complete collapse”, he warns.
In the interview, the President also addresses the question of whether the NCN Council has been making any special provisions for a scenario in which the NCN budget is not increased in 2024. Is it planning to pause some calls or restrict grant applications? “We regularly review our call portfolio to make sure everything works fine and matches the demands of the community. For now, there are no plans to pause any calls for lack of funds”, he emphasises.
Prof. Hasterok also reports on the work of the NCN Council in the past year. “In the first months, we worked under very difficult conditions, but now, after a year, I can say with confidence that the two halves of the Council (i.e. the new and the old members) have managed to sort out their differences. This is reflected not just in the fact that we have already passed 117 resolutions this year, but also that we are now calmer and more solution-oriented. I think that the next year, before the composition of the Council changes again, should be easier, and I am even tempted to say it might be more creative than the first”, he stresses.
When asked about the issues that the NCN and the Council will need to face in 2024, he talks about freedom from political pressure and motivation. “We must prioritise funding research excellence”, he emphasises. The plan is to further develop the NCN’s call portfolio in communication with the research community, which should be possible thanks to a bigger budget. Some of the new plans the Council is working on include a MINIATURA mentoring initiative and new Polish-American cooperation programmes.
The full text of the interview by Mariusz Karwowski can be found on the website of “Forum Akademickie”.
The need to increase the NCN budget was also recently addressed by Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director, in an interview published by “Forum Akademickie”, and on the NCN podcast.