The National Science Centre (NCN) has announced the launch of the GRIEG BIS and Coordination & Capacity Kick-off calls, which are a part of the Basic Research programme operated by NCN within the framework of the 4th edition of the EEA and Norway Grants.

The funding supports projects conducted in bilateral partnerships between Poland and the EEA countries (Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein). The current edition of the Grants will focus on research that may have potentially significant socio-economic implications in three priority areas:

• European green transition,
• democracy, rule of law, and human rights,
• social inclusion and resilience.

GRIEG BIS

Under GRIEG BIS, research projects may be planned for a period of 36 months. Funding is available for international partnerships led by Polish research organisations, involving at least one partner from Norway, Iceland, or Liechtenstein. The combined costs of partners from the Donor States must not exceed 40% of the total project budget. A joint proposal drafted by a partner is submitted electronically to the OSF submission system by the Polish leader. The principal investigator must be at least a PhD holder at the time of submission. While proposals submitted to the call may cover all research fields and topics, they must address challenges within the three priority areas. 

Proposals may be submitted until 30 September 2026. With a total budget of EUR 50,000,000, individual project grants will range from EUR 800,000 to EUR 1,500,000.

GRIEG Bis application form will be available in the OSF online submission system no late than 25th June, 2026

COORDINATION & CAPACITY KICK-OFF

The Coordination & Capacity Kick-off call supports Polish research teams, particularly those led by early-career researchers, in forming international partnerships with partners from the Donor State and developing interdisciplinary project concepts.

This will be achieved through bilateral working visits for face-to-face cooperation, alongside tailored capacity building activities, through which NCN will provide beneficiaries with targeted support based on the needs identified during the application process.

The submission deadline is 1 September 2026. The call has a total budget of EUR 150,000 and provides simplified funding in the form of a lump sum of EUR 2,800 per grant to cover travel and networking costs.

The Coordination & Capacity Kick-off call is a preparatory phase for the upcoming LANGSPIL call, scheduled for launch in November 2026. LANGSPIL will be a major funding opportunity with a total budget of EUR 12,000,000, supporting 3-year interdisciplinary basic research projects integrating multiple disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the social sciences and humanities. Participation in the C&C Kick-off call does not create any obligation to submit a full proposal under the LANGSPIL call.

Matchmaking Tool

To facilitate the formation of international consortia, NCN has launched a dedicated EEA & Norway Grants Partner Matchmaking Tool which allows Polish research organisations and potential partners from Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein to showcase their expertise and connect directly with one another. Researchers are strongly encouraged to register and create their profiles to maximise their chances of finding suitable partners for the GRIEG BIS and Coordination & Capacity Kick-off calls. Matchmaking Tool

Potential applicants should carefully review the official call documents before preparing and submitting their proposals. To provide further guidance, NCN will host a webinar on the GRIEG BIS and Kick-off calls, followed by a Q&A session on 8 July 2026 at 10AM CEST. The webinar will be held via the ClickMeeting platform and anyone interested in the webinar may register in advance through the registration link available here. The number of participants is limited to 500.

In the latest episode, Prof. Leszek Kaczmarek, a member of the ERC Scientific Council, and Katarzyna Kubica-Oro, from the National Contact Point for EU Research Programmes at NCBR, discuss how ERC proposals are assessed, why countries in our region win so few grants, and what researchers considering an application can actually do.

Leszek Kaczmarek is a molecular biologist at the Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He sits on the ERC Scientific Council and has served on the agency’s panels almost from the outset, since 2007. Katarzyna Kubica-Oro is an ERC specialist at the National Contact Point for EU Research Programmes and an experienced research project manager. The conversation is hosted by Anna Korzekwa-Jzefowicz.

How the ERC identifies a breakthrough

The ERC assesses proposals against a single criterion: scientific excellence. What counts as a breakthrough is for the panel to decide. “None of us on the Scientific Council defines it. We have a system that allows us to identify it. It is our collective wisdom that decides what counts as a breakthrough,” says Prof. Leszek Kaczmarek.

Katarzyna Kubica-Oro adds that a breakthrough looks different in every field. “A project has to be robust, but above all it has to surprise you,” she says.

An idea is only the beginning. At interview, the panel checks whether the researcher genuinely masters the methods the project will require. “Sometimes people come in with an interesting idea and stand before the panel like a manager: I will hire this person and that person, all of them specialists. And it is clear that they do not know the field themselves. Someone like that stands no chance of winning a grant,” notes Prof. Kaczmarek.

The Contact Point specialist highlights the simplest condition of all, one that researchers sometimes overlook. “The ERC wants to fund science, not science fiction. When preparing a proposal, researchers often do not even open the documentation or look at the assessment criteria. Yet the very first thing I would do is check whether my project is actually what the ERC is looking for,” she stresses.

25 per cent of the population, 5 per cent of the grants

The ERC Scientific Council, whose working group was chaired by Prof. Kaczmarek, published the White Paper on the low share of widening countries in ERC grants on 26 March 2026. The category of widening countries covers the states that joined the Union from 2004 onwards, together with Greece and Portugal. They account for about 25 per cent of the EU population, yet together they win fewer than 5 per cent of ERC grants. Fewer than 10 per cent of panel members come from these countries as well.

The White Paper sets out several reasons for the gap:

• low national spending on research,
• weak institutional support,
• limited access to international research networks,
• language and psychological barriers.

Prof. Kaczmarek traces the gap to a mechanism that, in his view, weakens science at its very roots. “The worst thing that can happen to Polish science is metric-based assessment. It pulls in exactly the opposite direction to what the ERC wants. There you have to focus on great achievements, whereas we are forced to do the opposite,” he says.

For him, the shortage of grants has a civilisational dimension. The untapped intellectual potential of a quarter of Europe’s population means fewer discoveries, fewer technologies and fewer therapies for everyone. Individual grants help reverse this: they build local centres of outstanding science that attract and train the next generation of researchers.

“Even single ERC grants create what I would call islands of good fortune here: pockets of outstanding science that draw in young researchers. And there they learn how to do good science. If we fail to harness scientific excellence, we do not move forward as a civilisation, as humankind,” says Prof. Kaczmarek. Western Europe’s leading centres lose out too, deprived of researchers who would otherwise have been trained in such places. Building islands of outstanding science in widening countries is in the shared interest of the whole continent.

What a researcher can do

What matters most is to build the right body of work from the doctorate onwards: a small number of genuinely significant papers in which the researcher is first author and makes the decisive contribution.

Environment and networking are just as crucial. Czechia is the prime example: in one Consolidator Grant call, it achieved a 25.5 per cent success rate, the highest of any country. Its success came from a grassroots initiative by ERC grant winners and panel members, who built a system of mentoring and support for prospective candidates.

In Poland, support is available from the National Contact Point, from horizontal contact points across six macroregions, and from the PAS Scientific Excellence Office, which runs workshops, training sessions and mock interviews. A further tool is the ERC Mentoring Initiative. “You have to surround yourself with people who have won these grants and who assess them,” Katarzyna Kubica-Oro stresses. “Without building a network, it will simply be harder.”

Finally, the host asks whether the conversation makes applying more or less tempting. “We do not encourage people to submit proposals. We move exceptional people to submit exceptional proposals,” replies Prof. Kaczmarek.

Selected remarks

Leszek Kaczmarek

The aim is not to win ERC grants. The aim is outstanding science; ERC grants are merely a measure of it, because Europe has no better yardstick for the highest scientific quality. The Nobel Prize may be a better one, but it is already extremely selective.

In 2012, I chaired a panel that awarded an ERC grant to a young researcher from Austria. After seven years as a postdoc in California, he returned with a single first-author paper, but a hugely significant one. He received the grant and a laboratory in Vienna. It shows very clearly what really counts in a track record.

Katarzyna Kubica-Oroń

The ERC is open to everyone, regardless of age, gender or background. The evaluation is not about your institution. I have often encountered the view that ERC grants are reserved for researchers at Europe’s top research centres. That is not true, and it is important that we do not keep the myth alive.

At the “ERC Stages” event during the Copernicus Festival, I invited many ERC grant winners who are currently running projects in Poland. The great majority of them did not win grants on their first attempt, but on a later one. It is a fiercely competitive call, so there is no point in giving up early. If it does not come off, you revise the application and learn how to do it better.

National Science Centre together with Biodiversa+ is pleased to pre-announce its upcoming 2026-2027 Joint Call, Novel ecosystems: biodiversity, socio-ecological consequences and future trajectories. The call will support transnational research and innovation projects addressing novel ecosystems, their biodiversity, socio-ecological dynamics and future trajectories.

As ecosystems become ever more shaped by human influence and global change, BiodivFuture will fund research to better understand ongoing transformations, the risks, opportunities and trade-offs they entail, and how knowledge can help foster resilient, interconnected, diverse and well-functioning ecosystems.

The call will focus on three broad themes:

• Theme A – Novel ecosystem functioning
  Understanding the functioning of novel ecosystems and their links to socio-cultural and socio-economic dynamics.
• Theme B – Pathways to novel ecosystems
  Studying pathways to novel ecosystems and associated socio-ecological dynamics under uncertainty and changing conditions.
• Theme C – Biodiversity benefits and equity in the context of novel ecosystems
  Exploring how biodiversity benefits, costs and trade-offs are shared across contexts, communities and generations.

Eligible participants

To be eligible, research consortia will have to include teams from a minimum of 3 countries financially participating in the Call, including at least two different EU Member States or Horizon Europe Associated Countries.

At this stage, a total budget of approximately €40 million has been provisionally reserved by participating countries, together with the European Commission.

Call timeline:

• Launch of the call: Wednesday 9 September 2026
• Deadline for pre-proposals submission (mandatory): Early November 2026
• Deadline for full-proposals submission: Early April 2027

Further details, including national and regional eligibility rules, will be published at the official launch. 

The largest editions to date of the OPUS and SONATA calls for research projects in NCN's history have now been concluded. More than five hundred basic research grants, with a total value of almost PLN 912 million, will go to Polish research institutions.

1. Record number of proposals. More than 3,700 proposals were submitted to the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls – almost 15 per cent more than a year earlier.
2. Record budget. We are allocating a total of nearly PLN 912 for project funding– the highest amount in the history of these calls.
3. More funded projects. A total of 522 projects will receive funding (this figure does not include LAP proposals). A year earlier, at the same stage, we had funded 441 projects, and 485 in 2024.
4. The growing scale of NCN calls. Researchers are submitting more and more proposals to NCN, which are processed by the same number of staff as several years ago.

The calls were announced in mid-September last year. OPUS has a broad formula and is open to all researchers, regardless of age, academic degree or career stage. Grants are available for projects carried out at Polish research institutions and lasting 12, 24, 36 or 48 months. The autumn edition of the call also includes the LAP track, through which applicants may seek funding for research carried out in cooperation with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders under the Weave programme; the maximum duration of these projects depends on the partner country. There are no budget limits for individual projects in this call. The budget may cover, among other things, salaries, scholarships and the cost of research, including the purchase of apparatus, equipment, software and materials, outsourced services, travel, and access to international research facilities. The principal investigator may be a researcher with at least one research paper published or accepted for publication or, for research in art, at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art.

SONATA is a call aimed at a specific group of researchers at an early stage of their careers. In the edition just concluded, proposals could be submitted by researchers who had been awarded their PhD degree between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2023. As in OPUS, principal investigators are required to have published research papers or have had artistic achievements or achievements in research in art. SONATA projects may last 12, 24 or 36 months. The budget may include salaries for the principal investigator and co-investigators, research costs (equipment, services, materials, travel and so on) and costs related to reducing the obligatory teaching load.

Funded projects

More than 3,700 proposals were submitted to NCN under the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 calls. This is an unprecedentedly high number: in 2025 we received five hundred fewer proposals, and in 2022-2024 we received around three thousand proposals each time for this configuration of calls.

Proposals are subject to an eligibility check at NCN premises, performed by the coordinators. Merit-based evaluation is carried out by Expert Teams made up of researchers appointed by the NCN Council separately for each NCN review panel; because of the large number of proposals, two separate teams are appointed for some panels. In the first stage of merit-based evaluation, each proposal is reviewed individually by the team members, and the decision to shortlist it for the next stage is taken collectively by the team at its first panel meeting. The second stage of merit-based evaluation involves obtaining at least two individual reviews from external reviewers. Final decisions on whether or not to recommend a proposal for funding are taken by the Expert Team after a discussion at the second panel meeting, taking the individual reviews into account. The record number of proposals in the calls just concluded has affected the organisation of NCN's evaluation process and extended its duration.

A total of 279 OPUS projects and 243 SONATA projects have been recommended for funding, for a total of nearly PLN 912 million. The success rate by number of proposals was 13.34% in the OPUS call (excluding LAP proposals) and 18.02% in the SONATA call.

The number of OPUS 30 grant winners will increase further: today's results do not include the results for OPUS LAP proposals, that is, projects carried out by Polish research teams in international cooperation with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders. NCN evaluated these proposals as the lead agency; now, in line with the principles of the Weave programme, the partner institutions must approve the results. We will publish information on the winning projects as approvals come in, in line with the timeline set out in the call announcement.

Full lists of projects recommended for funding, together with popular-science summaries:

• OPUS 30 AND SONATA 21 RANKING LISTS
• Ranking lists for download (PDF): OPUS 30 (without LAP), SONATA 21

Decisions and resubmitting a proposal to subsequent NCN calls

Decisions will be sent out on 11 June (rules on the service of decisions). Applicants who did not receive funding under OPUS 30+LAP/Weave and SONATA 21 and wish to apply again in subsequent calls should remember that, where the research tasks overlap with those in a previous proposal, a new proposal may be submitted only once the NCN Director's decision refusing funding has become final. This occurs once the 14-day appeal period has expired. In order to submit a new proposal in time for the calls open until 16 June, an applicant must waive the right to appeal before that deadline expires. Once such a declaration has been delivered to NCN, the decision becomes final, making it possible to resubmit the proposal in the new calls.

Applicants should submit a written declaration to NCN at ul. Twardowskiego 16, 30-312 Kraków, or electronically (signed with an advanced or qualified electronic signature in PAdES format) to the ESP: /ncn/SkrytkaESP or to the electronic delivery address: AE:PL-30168-16398-EHSIE-12.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact the officer responsible for your proposal, as indicated in the OSF system.

On 2 June 2026, representatives of European institutions, research organisations, research infrastructures and scientific communities gathered in Brussels to discuss one of the increasingly strategic issues for European research and innovation: how to build a research data ecosystem that is secure, resilient, interoperable and sovereign. The policy discussion Research Data in Europe: Security, Sovereignty and Resilience was hosted at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the European Union and jointly organised by the Permanent Representation, the National Science Centre Poland (NCN) and the PolSCA Office of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Brussels.

The meeting took place at a particularly important moment for Europe. As highlighted during the opening remarks, research data has become a strategic resource not only for scientific excellence but also for Europe's competitiveness, technological sovereignty and capacity to respond to major societal challenges. In the context of ongoing discussions on the future Framework Programme (FP10), the role of research data, digital infrastructures, open science and AI readiness is gaining increasing prominence. The event brought together approximately 50 participants representing various elements of the R&I ecosystem in Europe.

Research data at the heart of Europe's strategic ambitions

The meeting was opened by Magdalena Kula (Research Attaché, Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the EU), Krzysztof Jóźwiak (Director of the National Science Centre) and Tomasz Poprawka (Director, PolSCA Office of the Polish Academy of Sciences).

The first session provided a policy perspective on research data security and sovereignty in Europe. Michael Arentoft (European Commission, DG RTD), Lidia Borrell-Damian (Science Europe) and Daniel Wójcik (European Brain Council and Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS) reflected on the growing importance of research data for scientific collaboration, innovation and evidence-based policymaking. The discussion emphasised that Europe’s research data landscape remains fragmented and that stronger coordination, trusted infrastructures and long-term investments are needed to unlock the full value of data across borders and disciplines.

A recurring theme throughout the event was the need to understand data security in a broad sense. Participants agreed that security is not limited to technical protection or cybersecurity measures. It also encompasses legal and ethical safeguards, responsible governance, long-term preservation of critical datasets, and the ability to ensure trust throughout the entire data lifecycle: from collection and stewardship to sharing and reuse.

Building a trusted and resilient research data ecosystem

The panel discussion, moderated by Klaus Tochtermann, President of the EOSC Association, brought together perspectives from European and national research communities. Representatives of SURF in the Netherlands (Ron Augustus), CSC – IT Center for Science in Finland (Irina Kupiainen), EMBL (Plamena Markova) and the Institute of Oceanology PAS (Sławomir Sagan) discussed how Europe can strengthen resilience while maintaining openness and international collaboration. Panellists highlighted the importance of interoperability, sustainable digital infrastructures, data stewardship skills and trusted partnerships across the European Research Area.

Particular attention was devoted to the role of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Speakers noted that EOSC demonstrates how openness and security can reinforce rather than contradict one another. By federating distributed research data resources and promoting common standards, EOSC contributes to building a European environment based on trust, responsibility, interoperability and high-quality data management. As several participants stressed, data sovereignty should not be understood as isolation, but as the capacity to cooperate on European terms while maintaining control over critical resources and infrastructures.

The discussion concluded with a shared recognition that research data is no longer a supporting element of research projects but an increasingly decisive factor in their success and long-term impact. Building a secure, trusted and resilient European research data ecosystem will therefore require continued cooperation among policymakers, funding organisations, research infrastructures and scientific communities across Europe.

Poland in the European research data landscape

Beyond the discussion itself, the event also provided an opportunity to highlight Poland’s growing engagement in the development of the EOSC and the broader European research data ecosystem. Through the activities of the National Science Centre Poland (NCN), Polish research institutions and scientific communities are increasingly connected to European efforts aimed at advancing open science, FAIR data principles, interoperable infrastructures and responsible data stewardship. 

As one of the organisations actively involved in EOSC-related initiatives and policy discussions, NCN contributes to strengthening the integration of Polish researchers into the European Research Area, helping ensure that research data generated in Poland can be securely shared, discovered and reused within a trusted European framework. NCN coordinates the national EOSC-PL node, which has participated in the EOSC Federation since its establishment in 2025. The Polish node is developed jointly in partnership with Cyfronet AGH University of Kraków, Gdańsk University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw, and the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Biodegradable vascular implants and the history of one of the most important mining regions in Central Europe – these are the topics of the projects of the latest recipients of the Weave-UNISONO call, carried out by researchers from Poland and Germany.

The team from the Warsaw University of Technology, led by Dr hab. inż. Beata Butruk-Raszeja, in cooperation with the University Hospital Erlangen, will develop biodegradable nanofibrous materials for the tissue engineering of blood vessels. The researchers plan to create implants that can support the reconstruction of blood vessel walls while reducing the risk of infection and inflammation through the use of antibacterial and anti-inflammatory substances. In the future, this solution may increase the availability of effective vascular grafts for patients with cardiovascular diseases.

In turn, researchers from the University of Silesia, led by Prof. Dr hab. Ireneusz Malik, together with partners from Germany, will carry out a comprehensive study of the area inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in Tarnowskie Góry. The project will provide a better understanding of the centuries-long history of mining activity in the region and its impact on the landscape and the environment. The researchers will use geoarchaeological, geomorphological and pedological methods to identify and analyse former mining shafts and heaps. The research findings will provide new knowledge about the transformations of the post-mining landscape and the processes of its natural regeneration.

The proposals were evaluated by the German lead agency DFG, and NCN accepted the results of these evaluations under the Weave programme. The total budget allocated to the work of the Polish teams is almost PLN 1.89 million.

Weave-UNISONO and Lead Agency Procedure

Weave-UNISONO is a result of multilateral cooperation between the research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures in all academic disciplines, involving researchers from two or three European countries.

The winning applicants are selected pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure according to which one partner institution performs a complete merit-based evaluation of proposals, the results of which are subsequently approved by the other partners.

Under the Weave Programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding to the Lead Agency and their respective institutions participating in the Programme. Joint research projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly identified. 

Weave-UNISONO is carried out on an ongoing basis. Research teams intending to cooperate with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are urged to read the call text and apply for funding.

On 21–22 May 2026, representatives of the National Science Centre (NCN) and the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) visited Reykjavík and Akureyri (Iceland) to discuss the new edition of the EEA and Norway Grants in the field of R&I. The events were organised by the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannís) in cooperation with partners from Poland and Norway.

The meetings brought together representatives of the Icelandic research community, universities, research institutes and institutions interested in international cooperation under the new funding schemes. The attendees included representatives of the Polish Embassy in Reykjavík, the Ambassador of Poland to Iceland Aleksander Kropiwnicki and Counsellor Maciej Duszyński.

Ambassador of Poland to Iceland Aleksander Kropiwnicki

New EEA and Norway Grants calls

The purpose of the visit was to present the opportunities offered by the fourth edition of the EEA and Norway Grants in the areas of basic research, applied research and innovation. During the meetings, attendees discussed the calls organised by NCN and NCBR, as well as cooperation opportunities for Polish, Norwegian and Icelandic research institutions.

The NCN representatives presented the Basic Research Programme, including GRIEG BIS, LANGSPIL, and Coordination & Capacity Kick-off and Follow-up calls. They also introduced the SPARK polar research project supporting the involvement of Icelandic partners in the research cooperation previously developed by Poland and Norway.

NCBR presented the POLNORIS call supporting applied research and innovation projects carried out by international consortia of research organisations and businesses.

Polish-Icelandic cooperation and matchmaking tool

The Polish-Icelandic research collaboration was one of the major themes of the event. The hosts emphasised the importance of long-term research partnership building and enhanced internationalisation of research by Polish and Icelandic institutions.

The new matchmaking tool developed by NCN generated considerable interest from the participants. The tool, which can be used by partners looking for projects, facilitates the formation of international research consortia ahead of the upcoming calls. The meetings demonstrated that the Icelandic research community is keen to expand cooperation with Polish research institutions and participate in new funding opportunities offered under both EEA Grants research programmes.

Shared experiences and international perspective

Marzena Oliwkiewicz-Miklasińska

The programme also featured presentations by representatives of Rannís and the Research Council of Norway. A representative of the Research Council of Norway (RCN) discussed the experiences from previous editions of the EEA and Norway Grants. The attendees had the opportunity to discuss prospects for the future cooperation between Poland, Iceland and Norway.

The importance of international cooperation was given particular attention, especially for research development and for addressing contemporary social, technological and environmental challenges.

NCN and NCBR representatives

The National Science Centre was represented by Marcin Liana, Anna Wiktor, Marzena Oliwkiewicz-Miklasińska, Joanna Węgrzycka and Michał Olejnik. Maciej Jędrzejek represented the National Centre for Research and Development.

Under the Weave-UNISONO call, researchers from Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, together with partners from Switzerland and Austria, will examine the genomes of beech forests in terms of their capacity to adapt to variable environmental conditions.

The Polish team, led by Prof. Dr hab. Jarosław Burczyk from Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, in the project entitled 'Seeing the forest through the trees: understanding the significance of individual-level genetic variation for the functioning of beech forests', together with partners from Switzerland and Austria, will investigate the importance of the genetic diversity of European beech for the ability of forests to adapt to climate change. The researchers will analyse over a thousand tree genomes from across the entire range of the species, using genomic data, environmental monitoring and remote sensing techniques. The research will provide a better understanding of why individual trees differ in their resistance to drought and other environmental factors, and which traits are heritable. The project will also produce a pangenome of European beech, presenting the full genetic diversity of the species. The results obtained are intended to help protect beech forests and to support the adaptive management of their genetic resources under progressing climate change. The Polish budget for the project is over PLN 2.5 million. The proposal was evaluated by the Swiss agency SNSF, and NCN together with the Austrian agency FWF accepted the results of this evaluation under the Weave programme.

Weave-UNISONO and Lead Agency Procedure

Weave-UNISONO is a result of multilateral cooperation between the research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures in all academic disciplines, involving researchers from two or three European countries.

The winning applicants are selected pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure according to which one partner institution performs a complete merit-based evaluation of proposals, the results of which are subsequently approved by the other partners.

Under the Weave Programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding to the Lead Agency and their respective institutions participating in the Programme. Joint research projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly identified. 

Weave-UNISONO is carried out on an ongoing basis. Research teams intending to cooperate with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are urged to read the call text and apply for funding.

From more stable quantum computers and ultra-fast quantum internet technologies to sensors capable of detecting minute variations in gravitational fields, researchers involved in the projects selected under the QuantERA Call 2025 will work on key technologies underpinning the future quantum infrastructure. The research will combine quantum physics, photonics, mathematics, computer science, and nanotechnology. Notably, as many as seven of the awarded projects will be carried out with the participation of Polish research teams.

The fifth QuantERA call was launched in September 2025 by 34 research funding organisations from 29 countries and attracted significant interest from the scientific community from the outset. A record number of 287 proposals were submitted, from which 39 winning projects were selected. The strong interest in the Call 2025 competition demonstrates the importance of the QuantERA Programme and the need for its continuation, ensuring sustained funding for future research projects in one of the fastest-growing scientific domains. Among the awarded consortia are seven research teams from Poland, including one project coordinated by a Polish researcher. Five projects will receive funding from the National Science Centre (NCN) within the scope of basic research, one project will be funded by the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) within the scope of applied research, while one of the Polish teams will finance its participation from its own resources.

– Implementation of Call 2025 reaffirmed the critical role played by the QuantERA initiative in the European quantum ecosystem. Record numbers of proposals have been received in two call topics: 148 in Quantum Phenomena and Resources and 139 in Applied Quantum Science. These figures vividly illustrate the wealth of fresh ideas and concepts that quantum research community seeks to explore through transnational collaborations. 

Thanks to the commitment of research funding organisations participating in the call and the substantial EU financial contribution, in total 39 of the highest-ranked proposals will be funded in both topics. The results of QuantERA-funded projects will undoubtedly strengthen European position in the global efforts to benefit from the second quantum revolution. – says prof. Konrad Banaszek, QuantERA Scientific Coordinator.

List of the projects with the participation of Polish research teams

• EQUALITIES – Efficient Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing via Fine-Grained Logic Gates on Qudit Codes 

  Polish Principal Investigator: prof. Remigiusz Augusiak, Center for Theoretical Physics PAS, Warsaw

  Research team comprising researchers from Austria, Finland, Germany and Spain

• HEMS – Heat and Entropy Management in Superconducting Devices 

  Polish Principal Investigator: dr Maciej Zgirski, Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

  Research team comprising researchers from Finland, Germany and Italy

• INTEGRA – Innovative Architectures for Next-Generation Trapped Atom Interferometers 

  Polish Principal Investigator: dr Jan Chwedeńczuk, University of Warsaw

  Research team comprising researchers from Austria, France, Germany and Italy

• SDPCode – Semidefinite foundations for quantum codes: convergence, bounds, and constructions

  Polish Project Coordinator dr Felix Huber, University of Gdansk

  Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany and Slovenia

• ToDiQT – Towards Device-independent Quantum Technologies

  Polish Principal Investigator: dr Felix Huber, University of Gdansk

  Research team comprising researchers from Austria, Belgium and France

• QUASIMODO – QUAntum SImulations with MulticOmponent ultracolD atOms 

  Polish Principal Investigator:  dr Emilia Witkowska, Institute of Physics Polish Academy of Sciences

  Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany, Lithuania and Spain

• QUICFIRE – QUantum Internet Components in all-FIbre REalisation for low-loss entanglement distribution  

  Polish Principal Investigator:  dr Michał Karpiński, University of Warsaw

  Research team comprising researchers from Austria and United Kingdom

The NCN Generation is made up of researchers whose work pushes the boundaries of knowledge and changes our lives – improving health, protecting the environment, advancing technology and deepening our understanding of the world. The protagonist of episode 5 is Maciej Trusiak, who builds lensless microscopes that can image hundreds of thousands of cells in a single frame. Thanks to them, it is possible to check, immediately after a sample is collected, whether a biopsy is suitable for further analysis.

Maciej Trusiak is a professor at the Faculty of Mechatronics of the Warsaw University of Technology, where he leads the computational imaging group. As he himself emphasises, from the very beginning he was driven to “ask his own questions, follow his own path, and pursue his own goals, plans and dreams”. He started out on his own, and today he leads a team of 15. His research is funded by NCN and the European Research Council.

A simple device with a concrete application

An oncological diagnosis often begins with the collection of a small sample – cells or tissue – for example a thyroid smear. A histopathologist assesses it only after the slide has been stained, which takes time, and sometimes it turns out that the material was collected incorrectly and the biopsy has to be repeated.

The lensless microscope developed by Maciej Trusiak’s team makes it possible to check the quality of the specimen immediately after collection, before it goes on for further processing. This makes it possible to detect more quickly that a biopsy needs to be repeated, sparing the patient valuable time. As the researcher emphasises, the device will not replace the histopathologist, but it can become a tool for their preliminary assessment. The first research units are already being installed in the laboratories of biologists and physicians. Implementing a clinical version requires a manufacturing partner and – as the researcher himself estimates – several years of work. The design itself is, moreover, very inexpensive: the camera costs around one hundred dollars, the light source is an LED, and the sample is placed on an ordinary glass slide.

A hologram instead of a lens

A classical microscope magnifies the image using a system of lenses, and the drawback of such a solution is the small field of view – only a few cells can be observed at a time. In lensless microscopy there are no lenses. The sample lies directly above the camera sensor and is illuminated by a beam of light which – passing through the thin specimen – undergoes slight scattering. The undisturbed wave and the wave disturbed by the sample overlap and form a hologram on the sensor array. The image is produced only at a second stage, numerically: an algorithm reverses the propagation of the light and reconstructs the structure of the sample.

Such an arrangement makes it possible to image an entire cell culture – tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of cells at once. This increases the chance of capturing significant phenomena and reduces the risk of drawing erroneous conclusions on the basis of a fragment. The lensless microscope also copes with transparent samples, which do not absorb light and remain invisible to a classical camera. For this purpose it uses phase contrast – a mechanism described in the 1930s by Frits Zernike (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1953). Different intracellular structures – the nucleus, mitochondria, the cytoskeleton – delay the passing light wave to varying degrees, and reconstructing these delays makes it possible to distinguish them within the cell without the need to stain it.

A world record in lensless tomography

Lensless microscopy is currently being developed at many centres around the world – in the United States, China, Germany and the Netherlands. The common goal is to obtain as much information as possible from a single measurement: a wide field of view, a large measurement volume and high contrast when imaging transparent samples. A particular challenge remains tomography, that is, three-dimensional imaging.

The previous world record belonged to the team of Prof. Aydogan Ozcan from UCLA, who imaged a slice of mouse brain 200 micrometres thick. The team from the Warsaw University of Technology has pushed this limit to 500 micrometres, taking into account the phenomenon of multiple light scattering and numerically reversing it. The paper describing this result has been accepted for publication in the journal Light: Science & Applications.

Selected quotes

An advantage over the classical microscope

Classical microscopes allow you to image five to ten cells, which means we have a field of view at least ten thousand times larger. I like to think that this gives us two advantages. Firstly, we increase the probability that we will see something interesting, because we image all the cells. And the second thing is that we lower the probability that we will make some kind of error. If we look only at a fragment of a larger whole, we can very easily form a false impression and misjudge the situation.

Application in diagnostics

The best application that comes to my mind is to assist in diagnostics. (…) We take a smear, for example from the thyroid, we have a sample prepared for examination, but we do not know whether it is diagnostic. The histopathologist first has to stain it, look at it, and may then say that the biopsy was collected incorrectly. And we, before all this happens and we lose valuable time – especially for oncology patients – can quickly check whether the specimen was collected properly.

It begins with curiosity

(…) research on lizard venom led to a change in the treatment of diabetes and in human weight loss. It did not begin with the production of medicines at all. Curiosity is absolutely the most important thing, and it is at the start of every discovery. To realise that curiosity, funding is needed. The National Science Centre is essentially the only body in Poland that funds such research. It is very good that it exists – I would like the NCN budget to be at least doubled.

What does NCN mean for researchers?

I have been using funding from the National Science Centre since PRELUDIUM, which my mentor, Professor Krzysztof Patorski, helped me to write. The OPUS and SONATA grants were an absolute foundation that enabled me to apply for an ERC grant at all. I managed to secure it thanks to the experience I had previously gained by delivering NCN grants and building a team. Independence comes from funding – without NCN’s programmes I would not be in science.