Thirteen bilateral Polish-German projects and three trilateral projects conducted in partnership with scientists based in Austria and the Czech Republic were awarded funding under the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme. The total budget of Polish teams in these projects is approx. 29.8 million zlotys.

OPUS is the largest call for proposals in the NCN portfolio; in the autumn, it also opens a track for researchers seeking funds for projects carried out in cooperation with international partners under the Weave programme. The programme makes it significantly easier to apply for grants for bi- or multilateral research cooperation with researchers based in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders. As per its rules, proposals are only evaluated once in one of the partner countries, while the other funding agencies only approve the decision and award funding to their national research teams involved in the project.

The most recent LAP projects awarded funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave include bilateral projects conducted with partners in Germany and trilateral projects with the additional participation of Austria and the Czech Republic. The proposals were evaluated by the NCN experts alongside other OPUS 26 proposals in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure. The decisions were then approved by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which is going to fund German teams, as well as the Czech Science Foundation, for Czech teams, and the Austrian Science Fund, for Austrian partners.

Winners and their research

In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, funding was awarded to 2 projects with a total budget of nearly 4 million zlotys. One grant went to a Polish-German project headed by Prof. Adam Izdebski from the University of Warsaw, which will look into why some societies have succeeded and survived for hundreds of years, while others have failed. The researchers will analyse the crisis and reconstruction of the social and ecological systems of Brandenburg and Greater Poland between 1200 and 1800, focusing on internal factors (institutions, cultural and material resources, political stability) and external factors that impact the state system, both environmental (climate, epidemics) and international (wars, markets).

In Physical Sciences and Engineering, funding was awarded to 11 projects worth more than 17.8 million zlotys. One project, entitled ”Continuous protein crystallization process”, headed by Prof. Dorota Antos from the Rzeszów University of Technology, will work in tandem with researchers based in Germany and Austria to develop a novel method of obtaining and purifying recombinant proteins (necessary, for instance, for diagnostic and therapeutic applications), based on crystallization, which will enable them to be produced efficiently and sustainably at a lower cost. The new method is expected to increase the availability of these proteins to low- and medium-income countries so that they can also reap the benefits of advancements in contemporary medicine.

In Life Sciences, funding was awarded to 3 projects with a total budget of nearly 8 million zlotys. One grant went to Dr Aleksandra Rutkowska from the Gdańsk Medical University, who will head a team of Polish researchers, in partnership with a German team, in a project entitled “Mechanisms in the pathogenesis of CNS diseases induced by viral infections”. Specifically, the researchers will try to determine whether an Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection can be associated with the development of multiple sclerosis. Their research may contribute to our knowledge of how the virus leads to long-term problems in the central nervous system and potentially change our understanding of autoimmune diseases.

List of all 16 funded projects with partners in Germany, Czech Republic and Austria in .pdf

Ranking lists of all projects qualified for funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave with outlines

OPUS and OPUS LAP results

A total of 1737 proposals with a total budget of nearly 2.6 billion zlotys were submitted to the NCN under the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme. In the first round, grants worth 441 million zlotys were awarded to 267 researchers working on projects that did not involve any international cooperation under Weave. Results for OPUS LAP projects performed in cooperation with partners in Austria, Belgium-Flanders, the Czech Republic and Switzerland were announced in July, with 29 international projects worth more than 42.34 million zlotys joining the ranks of Weave winners. In August, a grant of 1.4 million zlotys went to one Polish-Luxembourgian project, and several months later, in early November, 5 more grants (worth more than 7.5 million zlotys in total) were awarded to teams working in tandem with Slovenian researchers.

These OPUS LAP results for bilateral projects carried out in partnership with German teams and, for trilateral projects, with Austrian and Czech teams, are the last announcements for the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave call. Funding was awarded to 11 projects from the original list and to 5 more from waiting lists. More about waiting lists.

After tallying the results of all rounds held thus far, the final list of OPUS 26+LAP/Weave winners consists of 318 projects worth more than 522 million zlotys.

Decisions

Funding decisions for bilateral projects with partners from Germany and trilateral projects with partners from Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, recommended for funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave, were sent out on 15 November. Decisions issued by the NCN Director are delivered electronically to the electronic address indicated in the proposal. How are funding decisions delivered?

In January 2025, the National Science Centre is slated to start as the official coordinator of the European Social Transformations and Resilience (STR) partnership. The agency will be the only institution in this part of Europe to lead an initiative of this kind.

“This is more than just a prestigious role, this is a real opportunity to define the subject matter of future calls and shape the main objectives of the partnership so that they include Polish priorities,” says Dr Malwina Gębalska, who manages the STR team at the NCN.

Partnerships bring together the European Commission, public institutions and the private sector in a quest for answers to the most important challenges faced by Europe, including climate change, environmental pollution, the loss of biodiversity and digital transformation. They are a key element of Horizon Europe, significantly contributing to the development of the European Research Area and the achievement of EU’s political priorities.

The 2021-2024 period saw the rise of 50 such initiatives. Nine more are slated to take off in the years 2025-2027; this includes the Social Transformations and Resilience (STR) partnership. Apart from one cultural heritage protection initiative, the STR will be the only partnership in the field of humanities and social science. It will organise calls for international research projects in humanities and social sciences, as well as develop and test tools and policies designed to make countries more resilient to natural disasters and social challenges caused by climate change, demographic changes, technological advancement and unexpected crises such as wars and pandemics.

The initiative will support creating a research-based policy in four main areas: the modernisation of social security and basic services systems, the future of labour, education support and skill development and fair transition toward climate neutrality. The partnership will take the next two years to delineate these issues, creating documents such as the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, which will then be presented at the European Commission. The STR team coordinator at the NCN says that the strategy-making process will be very open-ended: “We want to determine what kind of research is really needed today in Europe: what we already know and what we still need to investigate, what issues deserve our attention and what social policy actions should be taken up”, Malwina Gębalska explains.

The partnership is currently made up of Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Italy and Poland. The goal is to include perhaps as many as approx. 100 entities, including, most importantly, government ministries and research-funding agencies. Partners and stakeholders will also include universities, research institutes, NGOs, associations and non-academic entities from several dozen countries.

“We are going to start off with a state of the research survey prepared by European scientists, and then carry out consultations via workshops and an online platform. The platform will be a place for researchers and other stakeholders to submit their feedback regarding the four subject areas”, adds Dr Gębalska. In the nearest future, the NCN will begin to issue invitations for humanities and social science scholars to join the strategy-making process.

Gębalska emphasises that Western European countries have a highly developed network of cooperation at the national level, as well as research groups with substantial experience in helping draft research agendas and national priorities. Countries in the Widening group, such as Poland, have much fewer resources and less experience. Now is the time to change that. “Our ambition is to have our perspective, both social, national and scientific, included in the agenda, especially in those areas where we already have strong research teams”, Gębalska says.

The preparatory stage will last until the end of 2026 and the partnership will go into full swing in 2027-2034. The European Commission is to bankroll the partnership with c. EUR 60 million, and an additional EUR 60-90 million will come from the budgets of EU member states and associated countries.

The European Commission gave special support to the NCN in taking on the role of coordinator, in recognition of its earlier experience in managing programs such as CHANSE and QuantERA ERA-NET Cofund, funded from the Horizon 2020 framework programme. The NCN also won the support of the Polish Minister of Science and the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance agreed to shift resources in the NCN’s budget to create an STR partnership team inside the agency. The Minister of Science signed an official mandate for the NCN to coordinate the partnership.

What benefits will the NCN’s coordination of the partnership bring to Poland?

• the support of the HS community and an opportunity to promote and fund research that represent its strongest assets,
• access to financial resources for cooperation with stakeholders from various sectors,
• a chance to promote those research areas that address Polish research priorities but are also important for Polish society,
• the achievement of the priorities of our region of Europe and the cooperation of the Widening Countries (EU13 + Greece and Portugal),
• a chance for the NCN to shape European HS research policy as well as its broader research funding policy,
• a stronger image of Poland as a science management leader at the European level,
• a close cooperation with the European Commission.

Two grants for research components have been awarded to the returning scientists under the Polish Returns NAWA programme. They will pursue their research in Gliwice and Krakow.

Dr Marcin Kamiński, an expert in immunometabolism, will return to Poland from the United States. Owing to funding granted by the National Science Centre under the Polish Returns NAWA programme, he will be able to carry out a Life Sciences project ( “Targeting mitochondrial utilization of glycerol to modulate lymphocyte activation and obesity-induced inflammation”) at the Silesian University of Technology.

A grant in Physical Sciences and Engineering will go to Dr inż. Patryk Lipka-Bartosik, physicist specialising in Quantum Information Technology. After his return from the University of Geneva, he will study quantum thermodynamics at the Jagiellonian University.

Ranking Lists: research components under Polish Returns NAWA 2023  

Ranking List No 6 in PDF format 

Polish Returns NAWA 2023 enabled Polish researchers who had conducted research abroad to continue their scientific work at Polish universities and research institutions. The research component covered by the programme is funded by the National Science Centre pursuant to an agreement between the two agencies. Research components can be carried out by returning scientists or project team identified in a proposal submitted to the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme.

The National Science Centre conducted a continuous call for proposals to fund research components in the project from the date the funding decision was issued by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) under the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme until the last proposal for a research component recommended for funding in the call was submitted to the NCN.

The latest results concern the final components recommended for funding under the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme. Proposals submitted to the NCN were only subject to an eligibility check.

Wiktor Lewandowski, Błażej Skrzypulec and Marcin Magierowski will deliver lectures in the “Science in the Center” series organised by the Copernicus Center and the NCN. The first session will be held on 20 November.

The first lectures in the “Science in the Center” series were given by NCN Award winners in 2020. To date, together with the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, we have produced twelve livestreams, which have had a total of more than 300K views.

The lectures are livestreamed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Center and later added to the “Science in the Center” playlist. Each session consists of a talk by the NCN Award winner and a moderated discussion, during which viewers can ask questions and make comments in the chat window.

Meetings with 2024 NCN Award winners will be held on three consecutive Wednesdays: 20 November, 27 November, and 4 December at 6 pm.

The first talk will be given by Wiktor Lewandowski, this year’s NCN Award winner for Physical Sciences and Engineering, who specialises in photonics and materials chemistry. Lewandowski won the 2024 NCN Award for his groundbreaking technique to produce chiral photonic nanomaterials.

A week later, we will meet Błażej Skrzypulec, who specialises in the philosophy of perception and, in particular, the structural aspects of sensory experience, non-visual perceptual modalities and multimodal perception. He won this year’s NCN Award in Arts, Humanities and Social Swciences for his achievements in the study of the structural aspects of perceptual experience.

Marcin Magierowski, specialised in multidisciplinary biomedical research, will give the last lecture in this year’s series. He won this year’s NCN Award in life sciences for his study of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide as key signal transducers in the pathogenesis and pharmacology of gastrointestinal lesions. Magierowski will talk about “Beneficial and medicinal ‘poisons’: hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide as a biomedical discovery that transcends our current understanding of the nature of the human body”.

The ERC has settled the Synergy Grants call. 57 projects were selected to be implemented in 24 countries. The winning applicants include Prof. Adam Izdebski, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Warsaw and winner of NCN calls.

Prof. Adam Izdebski, fot. M. Kaźmierczak/Uniwersytet Warszawski Adam Izdebski is the Professor of Environmental History and Human Ecology at the University of Warsaw, winner of the FUGA and OPUS NCN calls. The ERC will fund the project under his leadership entitled “Understanding anew the role of pandemics in pre-industrial Europe (1300-1800 CE): history, natural science and machine learning.” “The aim of the project is to answer the question of why the same virus, the same bacterium, the same pathogen, produces completely different biological and social effects, depending on the context in which the epidemic takes place. The team, which will include geneticists, climatologists, archaeologists, historians, ecologists and machine learning specialists, will study more than 50 epidemics that Europe experienced between the Black Death and the invention of the smallpox vaccine, i.e. from the late Middle Ages to the early stages of industrialisation. For each of these outbreaks, we will try to examine ‘everything’ – not just their effects, but the whole context, from the weather to what people sang in churches during services and what headgear they wore. All of this vast knowledge will then be analysed using machine learning to create a model that will enable us to predict how various combined factors can influence the course of a pandemic. It is as much about clarifying the past as it is about creating a new theoretical basis that will be useful in preparing for future pandemics”, explains Prof. Adam Izdebski in a recording released by the University of Warsaw.

The project EUROpest will involve 10 institutions from across Europe and the United States, including four leading centres: University of Warsaw, University of Gießen, Georgetown University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The project will start in the middle of next year and will last six years.

Prof. Izdebski’s research funded by the NCN concerned the environmental history of Byzantium and Cracow.

An interview with Professor Krzysztof Jóźwiak was published in “Rzeczpospolita” on 5 November. The NCN Director spoke to Nadia Senkowska about research funding and Poland’s development ambitions.

“We need to focus on research, because only from this will ideas for future innovations emerge. While most projects will not result in tangible products that can be commercialised, the inventions that are nevertheless produced will ‘repay’ in taxes these earlier investments. They can secure the budget of an institution such as NCN for years to come,” says Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak in an interview with the “Rzeczpospolita” journalist.

The NCN Director points out that the current way of research funding does not allow for the development we should be aiming for, given the ambitions of researchers, society and the state. “If we are building a knowledge-based economy, investment in research should be a matter of course,” the head of NCN highlights.

Prof. Jóźwiak also gives examples of countries that have invested heavily in research. One of these is Belgium, which focused 30-40 years ago on the development of biotechnology and biopharmaceuticals. Why? Because it had great specialists and sensed how great the demand for research in these areas there would be in the future. Another example is Taiwan. “Admittedly, to a certain extent, the country did so under military pressure from China, but it is fair to say that we too – even if we were living under the hope or delusion that this kind of pressure was not on us – have recently changed our position on this issue,” Prof. Jóźwiak says.

The NCN Director also draws attention to the need to increase the NCN budget. He highlights that many researchers stayed in the country “because they saw that the system we are creating thanks to NCN (...) is similar to the one functioning in other countries”. There are also foreigners working here who came at a time when getting a grant was more feasible than today. “Both of these groups are specialists who could work anywhere in the world. So, if they continue to have to operate in a system where only 10 per cent of them have a chance to get their projects done, they will indeed look for work abroad,” he says.

For the full interview, see the “Rzeczpospolita” website.

Researchers experienced in managing research projects are welcome to joint our NCN mentor database. Mentors will support the winning applicants of the MINIATURA call in preparing their research projects.

The main aim of the NCN Mentoring Initiative is to support researchers involved in research activities under the MINIATURA call in the preparation of a research project, the funding of which may then be requested under NCN calls.

Mentors must be principal investigators of projects funded under the NCN MAESTRO, OPUS, SONATA BIS and SONATA calls and calls carried out in international collaboration or ERC call winners.

Mentoring may be requested by researchers applying for MINIATURA funding as of 2025. Their applications may include the name of a requested mentor or simply include their intention to use a mentoring support in their research activity. 

Researchers may join the mentor database via NCN Mentor Database: MINIATURA, where they will be requested to provide their full details and information on specialization and experience in research project performance. Once a form is completed and submitted by a mentor candidate, it will be verified by NCN officers and entered to an open mentor database on the NCN website. Enrolment in the mentor database is voluntary.

Polish researchers will carry out one trilateral and four bilateral international projects with the participation of scientists from the Czech Republic and Slovenia thanks to OPUS 26+LAP/Weave funding. Polish research teams awarded a total of 7.5 million zlotys.

OPUS is the largest call for proposals in the portfolio of the National Science Centre. Launched twice per year, in March and September, it is open to Polish researchers seeking funds for research projects carried out in cooperation with international research teams or with the use of large international research equipment. It is now a tradition that the autumn round of OPUS includes an additional funding track for projects carried out in cooperation with international partners under the Weave programme. The OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme allowed Polish researchers to apply for funding for bi- or trilateral projects jointly with research teams from Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders.

Winners

Successful projects carried out in cooperation with researchers from the Czech Republic and Slovenia, which were awarded funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave, had been submitted by researchers based in Gdańsk, Poznań and Kraków.

In Life Sciences, one grant went to Dr hab. Marcin Gruszecki from the Gdańsk Medical University, who will be working on possible applications of machine learning with elements of physiology in medical diagnostics, specifically in respiratory disorders. Dr inż. Olga Orman from the University of Agriculture in Kraków will head a Polish team working on a project entitled “Comparative analysis of growth characteristics of beech and fir regeneration shaped by different weather, climatic and environmental conditions in different parts of their natural ranges in Europe”. In Physical Sciences and Engineering, funding was awarded to a team from the Poznań University of Technology, led by Dr hab. Inż. Mateusz Barczewski, who will investigate living hybrid materials on bioderived composite substrates. Dr hab. inż. Grzegorz Boczkaj from the Gdańsk University of Technology will head a project looking into the phenomenon of microchannel cavitation for chemical oxidant activation. In art, humanities and social science, a Polish team led by Dr hab. Michał Mencfel from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in trilateral cooperation with Czech and Slovenian partners, will carry out a comparative study of art collecting among the aristocracy of Central Europe in the 1795-1939 period.

The work of Polish teams under the Weave programme is financed by the National Science Centre, while their Czech and Slovenian teams will get their funding from the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) and the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS), respectively.

• List of OPUS LAP projects: bilateral projects with partners from Slovenia (pdf)
• List of OPUS LAP projects: trilateral project with partners from Slovenia and the Czech Republic (pdf)
• Ranking lists: all projects funded under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave

OPUS and OPUS LAP results

A total of 1737 proposals with a total budget of nearly 2.6 billion zlotys were submitted to the NCN under the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme. In the first round, grants worth 441 million zlotys were awarded to 267 researchers working on projects that did not involve any international cooperation under Weave. Results for OPUS LAP projects planned in partnership with teams in Austria, Belgium-Flanders, the Czech Republic and Switzerland were announced in July, with 29 international projects worth more than 42.34 million zlotys joining the ranks of Weave winners. In August, another grant of 1.4 million zlotys went to one Polish-Luxembourgian project.

In the current, fourth round, a total of more than 7.5 million zlotys was awarded to four bilateral projects carried out by researchers from Poland and Slovenia, and one trilateral Polish-Czech-Slovenian project, initially put on a waiting list. Its funding was made possible by the extra 200 million zlotys awarded to the NCN this year by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the NCN Council’s resolutions that increase the budget of OPUS 26.

After tallying the results of all rounds held thus far, the list of OPUS 26+LAP/Weave winners currently consists of 302 projects worth more than 492 million zlotys.

LAP procedure

The LAP procedure is a proposal evaluation standard adopted at European research-funding institutions, designed to facilitate the funding application process for international research teams and streamline proposal review. A LAP proposal submitted to the NCN in the autumn round of OPUS undergoes a full merit-based evaluation in accordance with all the terms and conditions and criteria of the call; in addition, experts assess the scientific track record of foreign PIs and their previous research projects and determine whether the contribution of all teams in the project is balanced and complementary.

International partner teams apply to secure funding for their part of the project to their respective research-funding institutions under the Weave programme. However, in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure, they no longer need to pass a merit-based evaluation in those agencies and other partner agencies merely approve the results of evaluation performed by the NCN experts.

The approval process for proposals recommended for funding by the NCN is still underway for OPUS 26+LAP/Weave projects that involve cooperation with German partners.

Decisions

Funding decisions for bilateral projects with partners from Slovenia and trilateral projects with partners from Slovenia and the Czech Republic, recommended for funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave, were sent out on 4 November.

Decisions issued by the NCN Director are delivered electronically to the electronic address indicated in the proposal. How are funding decisions delivered?

We are pleased to announce that the Slovenian agency ARIS will conduct a call for proposals under the Weave programme from 30 October 2024 to 31 January 2025 (2 p.m.), with the Slovenian agency acting as the lead agency.

Please note that under the Weave-UNISONO call, if a joint proposal is submitted to ARIS as the lead agency by 31 January 2025 (2 p.m.), an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to ARIS, by 7 February 2025, 23:59 p.m. at the latest.

PLEASE NOTE: Once the work on the NCN proposal has started in the OSF submission system, the Polish research team has 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and submit it to the NCN. After that, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case a Polish research team that has not sent its proposal to the NCN must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system.