“In my field, the dominance of men starts with the dominance of boys. If there is any need for institutional support, it is in raising social awareness and educating kids early on. All children, boys and girls alike, should be encouraged to develop their interest in maths,” says Professor Ewa Szczurek. We met with the 2023 ERC CoG winner to discuss research, grants and measures to support equal opportunities for men and women in science.

Prof. Ewa Szczurek, photo credit: M. Szczurek Prof. Ewa Szczurek is a computer scientist working at the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw. Her research interests centre on artificial intelligence and its applications in biology and medicine. She has previously won three NCN grants. In November, as one of a group of just four scientists from Poland, she was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. “I am particularly interested in probabilistic graph models and deep generative models. As for their applications, I used to be involved in cancer research for many years. Quite recently, my interests have expanded to include the generation of antimicrobial peptides. Thanks to the ERC grant, I will be able to fully develop this line of research”, the scientist tells us.

Entitled DOG-AMP Deep Optimised Generation of Antimicrobial Peptides, her ERC project will apply cutting-edge AI methods to generate new antimicrobial peptides. More active and less toxic than the peptides we have today, they will be likely to find effective therapeutic applications and help counteract the problem of antimicrobial resistance.

Professor Szczurek studied in Warsaw and Uppsala (Sweden). She earned her PhD at the German Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, went on to work as a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and is currently a visiting professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. She will work on her ERC project at the University of Warsaw and at Helmholtz Munich.

The European Research Council has thus far awarded a total of 77 grants to researchers based in Poland. 15 of these have gone to computer scientists and mathematicians from the University of Warsaw (one project was hosted by the Institute of Mathematics, PAS).

In 2022, the Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw employed nearly 250 academic teachers; fewer than 20% of these were women. This included 16 female and 81 male professors.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz asked Prof. Ewa Szczurek about her ERC grant application and possible solutions that could help women researchers make it in male-dominated disciplines.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz: Computer scientists and mathematicians from the University of Warsaw have won nearly 20% of all ERC grants awarded to researchers based in Poland. Why do you think your faculty is so successful?

Ewa Szczurek: I would say it owes its success to a focus on scientific excellence and strong support mechanisms for active researchers. Also, the success stories of colleagues who have already won ERC grants really encourage others to apply.

But I want to emphasise that all grants, be it from the ERC or the NCN, are but a means to an end, not an end in itself. I suspect other ERC grant holders think the same.

AKJ: I recently saw a presentation by Prof. Piotr Sankowski, quadruple ERC grant winner, who said that he won a Starting Grant on his first attempt, but it took three to get the next two grants; the latest, the Proof of Concept Grant, required five attempts. Starting Grant holders from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Prof. Katharina Boguslawski and Prof. Piotr Wcisło, also told me that their university had supported their application from the IDUB budget. Was this your first ERC application? What support did you get?

ESz: I applied for a Starting Grant a few years ago, but I didn’t get it. That important project was funded by the NCN under SONATA BIS.

It took me two attempts to get the ERC Consolidator Grant. Last year, I got a lot of support from the Research Support Office at the University of Warsaw, the PAS Office of Scientific Excellence, as well as my faculty colleagues. I took part in “mock panels”, during which renowned researchers took on the role of ERC panel experts. This year, I was also supported by the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich in Germany, which pays for a professional coach to help prepare candidates for the ERC interview. I could also really count on my team.

For a research team to work well, it also needs administrative support, which is why I am very thankful to the research support section at my faculty, the administrative staff of the University of Warsaw, our computer lab and computing server admins. I also relied on my faculty’s support for active researchers.

AKJ: Did the fact you had previously worked on NCN-funded projects have an impact on your ERC application and its success?

ESz: The fact that I had won grants from the NCN, an independent, expert-based research-funding institution in Poland, showed that I am an independent researcher with enough research project experience. This is an important element of my CV, which is also looked at by ERC reviewers.

AKJ: You work in a male-dominated discipline. Of course, your hard-won success is the product of your own effort. Do you see any chance and need for institutional change to help women make it in disciplines where they have long been under-represented?

ESz: In my field, the dominance of men starts with the dominance of boys. As early as in primary school, girls are often perceived as being less gifted in STEM subjects than boys, including by their own parents. Fortunately, that wasn’t my problem. My mom was a mathematician and worked with computers, and my father was a physicist. So it was only natural that I would think that anyone, man or woman, could take up STEM subjects. If there is any need for institutional support, it is in raising social awareness and educating kids early on. Speaking more generally, I believe all children, boys and girls alike, should be encouraged to develop their interest in maths.

AKJ: How do you see the situation and status of women researchers in Poland in comparison to other countries you’ve worked in? What models could we transplant from Switzerland, Germany, or the US?

ESz: I haven’t noticed any differences in the status of women at my previous institutions and my current workplace in Poland.

As for the models we could copy, I think university childcare centres would be it. At ETH Zurich in Switzerland, employees could leave their children in a day-care centre or pre-school, which also had several branches in different neighbourhoods across the city. At the University of Chicago in the US, too, there is an excellent elementary school. Knowing that your kids are in good care, getting excellent education while you’re at work, is very important for your research performance. It also really helps the university attract researchers with families.

AKJ: Do you see any solutions, especially low-cost solutions, that could easily be implemented in every research institution to help researchers reconcile their family and professional roles?

ESz: On principle, it is incredibly difficult for researchers to reconcile work and family life, because this line of work requires frequent travel and is very absorbing mentally. The only thing I can think of is making room for remote work, which is an option that’s already available at my faculty, for instance.

“The amendment to the 2024 budget bill, as announced by the future government and parliament, is our last call to prevent a serious collapse of the Polish science and higher education system through changes in spending, especially on subsidies for the NCN”, reads an open letter addressed to the public authorities by a group of Polish researchers. 

The signatories to the appeal point out that the issues of science and higher education have been almost completely side-lined in public debate and in statements by major political parties, and “the current challenges facing research and the material situation of researchers are becoming increasingly dramatic”.

They also emphasise that “the state of basic research is one of the main factors that determine a country’s societal and civilizational growth” and appeal for a NCN budget increase. “Given the size of the Polish budget, we believe that our call to restore the status quo ante, where the National Science Centre was able to fund 25-20% of projects submitted under its calls, is not only necessary, but also realistic”, they argue.

The open letter was started by Prof. Dariusz Rakusa from the University of Wrocław, Prof. Marek Figlerowicz from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS, and Prof. Przemysław Wojtaszek from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.

Sign the appeal here.

The JPND network, which supports research on neurodegenerative diseases, will be announcing a new international call for proposals in January 2024.

The theme of JPND Call 2024 is: Mechanisms and measurement of disease progression in the early phase of neurodegenerative diseases. The objective of the call is to improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind the development of neurodegenerative diseases so that we are better equipped to measure a disease’s progression parameters at its early and asymptomatic stages. Proposals submitted to the call must involve ambitious, innovative and multidisciplinary research based on advanced research hypotheses, and put an emphasis on modern, advanced methodologies.

JPND Call 2024 will accept proposals in two stages. The call will be officially announced in early January 2024. The deadline for the submission of joint pre-proposals is set for early March 2024. Funding is available to international consortia made up of at least 3 research teams from at least 3 different countries participating in the programme. The PI of the Polish team must have at least a PhD degree.

More information about the call, including a more detailed discussion of this year’s theme and a list of participating countries, can be found on the website of the JPND network.

This is not an official announcement. Detailed call conditions will be specified in the official announcement of the call.

Ewa Szczurek, Szymon Toruńczyk, Paweł Caputa, and Magdalena Wojcieszak from the University of Warsaw have just grabbed four ERC Consolidator Grants. They have also worked on NCN-funded projects.

Prof. Ewa Szczurek will work on a project entitled Deep Optimised Generation of Antimicrobial Peptides (DOG-AMP) to generate new antimicrobial peptides that would be more active and less toxic than the peptides we have today. They could be used more effectively in therapies and help counteract antimicrobial resistance.

Prof. Szczurek is a winner of three NCN grants: POLONEZ, SONATA BIS and OPUS, and works at the Faculty of Mathematics, Mechanics and Computer Science of the University of Warsaw. Her faculty colleague, Prof. Szymon Toruńczyk, who also won a CoG, will focus on the “Limits of Structural Tractability”. His project aims to develop a mathematical theory composed of definitions, theorems and proofs to describe the theoretical limits of effective graph-computation algorithms.

Professor Toruńczyk has previously completed a SONATA project on database theory.

Prof. Paweł Caputa will work on a project entitled “Quantum Complexity from Quantum Field Theories to Quantum Gravity”. His goal is to develop precise measures of state complexity and operators in quantum theories and employ them in quantum gravity models to improve our understanding of the interior of black holes and cosmological singularities.

Prof. Caputa works at the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw, where he is also working on a SONATA BIS projects in quantum gravity, quantum information and quantum computing. 

Last but not least, the fourth CoG will go to Prof. Magdalena Wojcieszak from the Centre of Migration Research at the University of Warsaw, who will work on a project focused on “Incentivizing Citizen Exposure to Quality News Online: Framework and Tools”.

ERC Consolidator Grants, worth up to 2 million euro, are available to researchers who earned their PhD 7 to 12 years ago. In this iteration of the CoG call, funding was awarded to a total of 308 researchers of 43 different nationalities. The greatest number of projects will be conducted in Germany (66), the Netherlands (36), and France (23).

More information about the call and its winners can be found on the website of the ERC.

A list of the previous winners of all ERC grants (Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant, Advanced Grant, Proof of Concept and Synergy Grant) working at Polish institutions is available here:  https://www.kpk.gov.pl/horyzont-europa/excelence-science/erc-frontier-research

Nearly all Polish ERC winners have previously served as a PI or worked in an NCN-funded project.

A little over 338 million zlotys in funding will go to 407 projects selected under OPUS 25 and PRELUDIUM 22. This is the lowest number of winning projects in these calls since the NCN was founded. Because our budget has been frozen, success rates in this iteration of OPUS and PRELUDIUM fell to just 8.06% and 10.73%, respectively.

OPUS and PRELUDIUM are two very well-known calls from the NCN portfolio, which allow Polish researchers to carry out basic research at Polish host institutions. OPUS grants go toward funding complex projects that may last several years, require large research teams, major international research equipment or collaboration with international partners – all this is available to any researcher, no matter how far they have advanced in their career. PRELUDIUM is a unique call that allows early-stage researchers (without a PhD degree) to gain their first experience coordinating a project, which may take up to three years.

“Since the first days of the National Science Centre, we have aimed at building a complete research career path that would prize researcher independence and growth. Many outstanding scientists working in Poland today belong to what we call ‘the NCN generation’, i.e., researchers who first struck out on their own with a PRELUDIUM project and then went on to use our grants to build their own research teams, which conduct top world-level research today”, says Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director.

Ranking lists

OPUS 25 ranking list (.pdf)

PRELUDIUM 22 ranking list (.pdf)

OPUS 25 and PRELUDIUM 22 in figures

These have been record iterations of these calls in every sense, including the negative. Over the past two years, due to a very low research-funding budget available to the NCN, the number of awarded grants has been steadily declining.

Under OPUS 25, funding was awarded to 176 out of 2184 proposals, which means that the success rate dropped to just 8.06%, much lower than for previous iterations. OPUS 25 winners will receive a total of c. 301.6 million zlotys. This is also less than the figure for previous calls: two years ago, OPUS 21 awarded 559 million zlotys to 417 researchers, OPUS 22 – 500 million zlotys to 350 researchers, and OPUS 23 – 401.5 million to 266 researchers. In May 2023, the corresponding figures dropped to just 224 researchers and 364.4 million zlotys. Success rates also steadily declined over time, falling from almost 19% to a meagre 11.7%.

The figures for PRELUDIUM are just as telling. In the 22nd iteration of the call, grants will go to 1 out of every 10 young researchers who applied; the ranking list features 231 projects with a total budget of c. 36.5 million zlotys (for a success rate of 10.73%). Here, as elsewhere, the past two years have witnessed a significant decline: under PRELUDIUM 20, we funded 495 projects with 77 million zlotys (22% success rate), and in PRELUDIUM 21 – 258 projects worth a total of 41.2 million (12% success rate).

We have been warning about this radical drop in success rates for a long time.

“It is the first time in our history that we are only able to fund such a small number of projects. We all know what the consequences will be: in light of the instability in the funding system, talented Polish researchers will begin to look for greener pastures abroad. This is why the state budget for the next few years should absolutely prioritise an increase in the NCN’s basic research budget”, emphasises Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director.

NCN budget, call budget and success rates

The NCN should ensure an optimal success rate of 25-30% in order to be able to fund the best projects and boost our chances of success in the international scientific arena. The total research-funding budget of the NCN, as we have said time after time, has remained nearly the same in the last six years. Over the same period, the amount of funding requested by researchers has increased by several dozen percent. Today, the NCN grant fails by a large margin to meet the needs of the Polish research community.

At the NCN, we have long been lobbying for an increase in the grant-in-aid for research funding.

“In recent years, the qualifications of researchers have considerably increased; they now plan for very ambitious, high-quality projects, often in cooperation with many international partners, which obviously requires more funding. This is a good sign and the natural development of research in our country. At the NCN, we are campaigning for more funding not for our institution as such, but for the researchers who benefit from our grants and who, thanks to our grants, want to continue their work in Poland. We are grateful for all the support we have received from the research community thus far, but we need to ask for even more. This time, we can try and influence the public authorities to increase research funding”, emphasised the NCN Director.

Waiting lists of highly rated projects

In connection to its campaign to acquire more funding for the NCN from 2024 onward, the NCN Council, in communication with the Director, passed a resolution that allows Expert Teams, for the first time in the history of OPUS and PRELUDIUM calls, to draw up waiting lists. The waiting lists include projects that earned a high score in merit-based evaluation and only failed to win a grant due to our limited resources. Similar waiting lists will be drawn up in upcoming calls, such as SONATA BIS 13 and MAESTRO 15, which will conclude soon.

We decided to take this step in anticipation of a potential budget increase in 2024 and in subsequent years. In domestic NCN programmes, call procedures take around 5 months from the submission deadline to grant decision. Winning projects can usually go ahead 8-9 months after the end of the submission period.

The NCN budget has an annual billing cycle. This means that any resources we do not use in a given year must be paid back to the Ministry of Education and Science by the last working day of December; they may not be carried over to the next year. “Waiting lists allow us to spend a potential budget increase on highly-rated projects in 2024”, Prof. Jóźwiak explains.

Once the National Science Centre has received additional resources, the NCN Council will decide to which calls they will be added. The Council may pass a resolution to modify the budget of such call, depending on when and how much more resources will be awarded to the National Science Centre by the Ministry of Education and Science.

I was put on a waiting list. What does that mean?

Researchers who were put on a waiting list receive a negative funding decision, with a caveat that they are on the waiting list. They are not in any way restricted in the exercise of their rights in the call procedure; they can still appeal against the decision and submit proposals in other calls.

If the budget of the NCN is increased and the NCN Council passes a resolution to commit additional resources to specific calls, waiting list projects will be funded in the order in which they have been ranked by Expert Teams. How many waiting list projects are funded will depend on the sum added to the project by the Council. The PIs of successful projects will then receive a new funding decision and a relevant announcement will be published on the NCN website.

Thirteen (13) projects with a total budget of PLN 15 million will be funded in the third iteration of the international SHENG call for Polish-Chinese research projects in selected disciplines of Physical Sciences and Engineering, as well as Social Sciences.         

The call attracted 125 proposals, out of which only 5 addressed topics in Social Sciences. Winners include 1 project in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and as many as 12 in Physical Sciences and Engineering.

Ranking list

New imaging methods: Physical Sciences at the service of Life Sciences

Cells are the basic structural and functional elements of all living organisms. Various applications in research, diagnostics and pharmacology often require us to perform quick and non-destructive functional testing on live cell cultures. Unfortunately, single cell-level research is time consuming if done on a whole population, fluorescent microscopy imaging is difficult because the samples need to be marked and the process is frequently toxic. A team from the Warsaw University of Technology, headed by Prof. Małgorzata Kujawińska, in cooperation with scientists based at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, will work on new non-fluorescent imaging tools for single-cell analysis that will allow scientists to study large populations with sub-cellular precision, with easy sample preparation and no risk of contamination.

The main goal of a project submitted by Dr hab. inż. Dominika Wawrzyńczyk from the Wrocław University of Technology is to develop a new advanced optical bioimaging and bio-detection technique, using quick luminescence life-cycle mapping and specially designed luminescent nanoprobes that can perform the real-time detection and imaging of changes in their immediate environment. The new imaging method will find biomedical applications. The project relies on interdisciplinary experience in nanoengineering (brought in by the Polish team) and advanced optical bioimaging and biosensors (the Chinese team at Shenzhen University).

Science as a weapon against climate change

A team led by Dr hab. Piotr Matczak from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, will collaborate with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to address a very topical issue related to climate change: rising temperatures in urban areas. Using the example of Warsaw and Beijing, the scientists will look into how urban development is linked to an increase in temperatures and whether (and if so, how) urban heat islands can be neutralised or minimised by the appropriate planning of urban green areas and water basins. The project will also develop public policy recommendations to mitigate the phenomenon of heat islands in the two cities under study.

Rapid technological progress in recent years has not only led to new advances in space technologies, ICT and artificial intelligence, but also exacerbated the frequency and severity of natural disasters and man-made catastrophes. Climate change and extreme weather phenomena are among the most pressing challenges of our world. In order to try and address this challenge, scientists from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences, led by Prof. Witold Rohm, teamed up with researchers from the China University of Mining under a joint initiative called “Destination Earth”. Their research project aims to create a virtual replica (digital twin) of Earth’s objects and systems, including its atmosphere, oceans and land masses, which would then be used to simulate and predict their response to a variety of conditions. Real-time data will come from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), supported by artificial intelligence. The project might have an important impact on the future of our societies, especially in terms of protection against climate change and economic system collapse.

SHENG call

The international bilateral SHENG 3 call is organised by the National Science Centre in cooperation with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). It is based on a parallel review procedure, which means that the two agencies conduct parallel eligibility checks and merit-based evaluation, and funding is only awarded to those proposals that are approved by both the NCN and the NSFC. SHENG 3 was open to basic research proposals in disciplines included in the following panels: ST1-ST3, ST6-ST7, ST9-ST10, and HS4.

The winning projects will be conducted in Poland and China; each will have two PIs: one in China and one in Poland. The grants can go toward funding research, salaries for research team members, scholarships for students and PhD candidates, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and other necessary project expenses for the Polish part of the project. Read more about the call here.

Decisions

All the positive and negative decisions for proposals submitted under SHENG 3 have already been sent out. Please remember that the decisions of the NCN Director are delivered to the applicant electronically, to the e-mail address indicated in the proposal.

If the applicant is an entity mentioned in Article 27 (1)-(7) and (9) of the NCN Act, the decision will only be delivered to the Electronic Delivery Box (ESP ePUAP) provided in the proposal. If the applicant is a natural person and has listed an ePUAP address in the proposal, the decision will be sent to that address. Otherwise, a message will be sent to the applicant’s indicated e-mail account, containing a link from which the decision of the NCN Director can be downloaded.

The funding decisions of the Director of the National Science Centre are also communicated to the principal investigator and, if the applicant is a natural person, to the host institution indicated in the proposal. If you do not receive a decision, please make sure that the address (ESP, ePUAP, e-mail) listed in your proposal is correct. If not, contact the person in charge of the proposal, as indicated in the OSF submission system.

On 28 November, join us for an online lecture by Prof. Łukasz Opaliński, winner of 2023 NCN Award, who will talk about how cellular processes can be harnessed to develop innovative cancer therapies. The session is organised within the framework of the “Science at the Centre” series.

Prof. Łukasz Opaliński is a molecular biologist working at the University of Wrocław, who won the 2023 NCN Award for Life Sciences in October. On Tuesday (28 November), he will deliver a lecture entitled “Multivalency in biology and biomedicine: how to harness natural cellular processes to develop innovative cancer therapies”. The lecture will be streamed on the YouTube  channel of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Research.

Cells are separated from the external environment by a cell membrane, which ensures their integrity and allows them to retain multidimensional control over their internal processes. However, they are not isolated structures; they are in continuous communication with the surrounding environment. Thanks to receptor proteins embedded in the cell membrane, cells recognise external signals (arriving in the form of, e.g., proteins or other macromolecules), decipher the information they encode and convert it into a precise cellular response. Among the most important receptors found on the surface of human cells are the fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFR), which respond to the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) and regulate processes such as cell division, motility and death. The FGF/FGFR system is crucial for the growth and homeostasis of the human body and abnormalities in it lead to a number of diseases, including cancer.

“Most biochemical processes inside living cells involve intermolecular interactions. The same is true for the FGF/FGFR system; the FGF present in the serum is recognised by FGFR and their interaction leads to the formation of an active FGF/FGFR complex. In a typical FGFR activation mechanism, what we see is a monovalent interaction: one FGF molecule interacts with a single FGFR molecule. In my lecture, however, I will focus on multivalent interactions that involve many copies of the same macromolecules all at once, as well as their importance for cellular signalling and transport. The latest research by our team has shown that such multivalent interactions do occur naturally between the FGFR, the FGF and proteins from the galectin family, forming an additional signalling pathway inside the cell, with an important impact on FGFR transport”, the scientist has told us.

Opaliński will also tell us how we can mimic natural processes that involve multivalent interactions to design targeted cancer therapies.

The live stream starts at 6 pm. The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session, during which you will be able to ask your questions via chat.

Professor Opaliński’s lecture will be the second talk this year, and the eleventh overall, delivered within the framework of the “Science at the Centre” series organised together by the NCN and the Copernicus Center. In mid-November, we met with Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, another NCN Award winner (for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), who took us on a guided tour of the “Recovered Territories”.

All lectures.

Additional materials:

NCN Awards 2023 gala

Lecture by Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska: announcement and video