On Thursday, 25^th July, Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk, Director of the National Science Centre met with the President of the Max Planck Society, Prof. Peter Gruss. The meeting, which took place in Warsaw, was arranged by the Foundation for Polish Science. Present at the meeting were also Prof. Maciej Żylicz, the President of the foundation, Prof. Krzysztof Kurzydłowski, Director of the National Centre for Research and Development, Prof. Robert Hołyst, Director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Prof. Jacek Kuźnicki, Director of the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Prof. Tomasz Dietl from the University of Wrocław and the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Leszek Roszkowski from the National Centre for Nuclear Research.

The chief topic of the meeting was cooperation between Germany and Poland in terms of research − the use of financial resources in the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme being one aspect of this. The focus of the talks were teaming and twinning initiatives in which researchers from both countries are to participate. They sought adequate ways of increasing the competitiveness of Polish research as well as improving the existing model of research funding. Prof. Guss talked about the experience of the Max Planck Society which runs 82 institutes conducting some of the world’s highest-level research. Employees of these institutes have accumulated a total of 32 Nobel Prizes and are ranked third in the world for publications in Nature (after Harvard and Stanford).

On the 18^th of July the NCN hosted a visit from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Poland. During the meeting the NCN Director Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk, Counseller for Science and Technology Dr Ye Xiangdong and Shao Yinghong talked about the Polish and Chinese research funding system, as well as NCN’s funding portfolio. During their visit to Krakow the guests had an opportunity to visit the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics  and Biotechnology of Jagiellonian University. Prof. Józef Dulak guided them around the laboratories where research in stem cell, medical, vascular and cancer biology as well as genetic engineering  and gene therapy is carried out. The professor also pointed out the faculty’s major achievements and introduced various international projects conducted in cooperation with European research institutions.

Neutrinos are the most elusive particles as they have extremely weak interactions with all other particles. They have rather unique properties and are even expected to be identical with their own antiparticles. So far this property is, however, not experimentally verified even though many studies of neutrinos undertaken over the last 60 years have already boosted our understanding of elementary particle physics. Now scientists from the GERDA collaboration have obtained new strong limits for the so-called neutrino-less double beta decay which tests if neutrinos are their own antiparticles. The result has various important implications for cosmology, astrophysics and particle physics and it adds information about neutrino masses.

Besides photons, neutrinos are the most abundant particles in the Universe. They are often called `ghost particles’, because they interact extremely weakly with matter. They are therefore an invisible, but very important component of the Universe and could carry as much mass as all other known forms of matter put together − albeit traveling at almost the speed of light over vast distances. Their tiny mass also has important consequences for the structures in the Universe and they are a driving element in the explosion of Supernovae. Yet their most remarkable and important property was proposed by Ettore Majorana in the 1930s: Unlike all other particles that form known matter around us, neutrinos may be their own antiparticles.

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National Science Centre Open Day on the 8^th and 9^th May, academic and cultural institutions of the Śląsk (Upper Silesia) region hosted the first edition of the event entitled National Science Centre Open Day. This event was intended as an opportunity for both researchers and administrative and finance staff from universities and research institutions, to familiarise themselves  – through workshops and meetings – with the system of research funding at the NCN. Universities in Katowice and Gliwice, the venues for information meetings, were open to all researchers interested in NCN funding schemes. They had the opportunity to meet representatives of the Council and staff from the National Science Centre. At dedicated thematic meetings, the NCN funding portfolio was introduced to researchers representing specific disciplines.

During the two days of meetings and discussions among the representatives of the Centre and Polish research communities, established researchers, governing bodies of universities and representatives of the government, a number of issues related to the Centre’s activities were raised. The functioning of the research funding system, the process of proposal evaluation, the mobility of young researchers and the most common errors in proposals were but a few of the various topics under debate. The NCN Council discussed also the strategies of developing basic research within the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation on the national and regional level.

Mechanisms of funding for young researchers made for a separate seminar for researchers beginning their academic career. Participants could address prof. Michał Karoński, Chair of the Council of the NCN, and Anna Koržinek from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, with their questions.

On the second day of the NCN event, the large audience had a unique opportunity to listen to NCN grantees presenting their research projects. The NCN Awards gala also took place on this day. The NCN Award is intended for outstanding researchers under 40 who have made a significant contribution to the area of basic research. The award for remarkable achievements in the field of humanities was given to dr Anna Matysiak from the Warsaw School of Economics for her research on the transformation of the family; a work in which she combines demography, economy and social policy by means of advanced methods of quantitative analyses.  Dr hab. Piotr Garstecki, representing the area of Physical Sciences and Engineering, from the Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences,  obtained an award for his innovation in research on the dynamics of complex fluids and their potential use in microbiology and biochemistry. Finally, the award in Life Sciences was granted to dr hab. Andrzej Stanisław Dziembowski from the Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw, who discovered the function of the human gene C16orf57.

fot. Kamila Buturla