Episode 9 of our podcast features a conversation between our host Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz and Prof. Zbigniew Błocki in which he talks about NCN’s recent situation and condition of Polish science and research institutions after the election.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, Zbigniew Błocki Prof. Zbigniew Błocki was the Director of the National Science Centre from March 2015 to March 2023 (two terms of office) and interim Director since March 2023

In October 2021, the Minister Przemysław Czarnek said that he would “put the National Science Centre back on its feet”. In August 2023, he promised that in autumn he would close the National Science Centre down and merge it with the National Centre for Research and Development and the Medical Research Agency.

At the same time, the NCN’s budget was frozen.

Prof. Zbigniew Błocki talks about the attempts to “reform” and “starve” the National Science Centre or rather “starve Polish science”.

However, the main part of the conversation was about the future. Prof. Błocki talked about the need to increase the NCN’s budget in the coming years, NCN development directions and new tasks that could be assumed by the NCN. When asked about a “list of tasks” for the new minister and suggestions for what should be done with recently created programmes and institutions (e.g., the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy) or institutions that have succumbed to political pressure (e.g., the National Centre for Research and Development, “NCBR”), our guest said that “[it needs to be] thoroughly reformed, the time is ripe” referring to the National Centre for Research and Development. “I have heard people saying that the National Centre for Research and Development had been working perfectly until now, but a year or year and a half ago a new team came, and the scandals started. Well, it was not really like that. People who are aware of what is happening know that the NCBR did not work well from the very beginning. We have injected tens of billions of zlotys into the so-called innovations (...) and the result is that our innovation rankings are falling”.

At the end, Prof. Błocki summed up his work at the National Science Centre. “I have been saying for quite some time that working for the National Science Centre was the greatest adventure of my life. I am saying that now because this chapter will soon be over. I am very happy that I managed to avoid the greatest threat the National Science Centre was facing [restricted independence]. However, I believe that the recent years have been wasted in terms of opportunities and challenges facing science, but the National Science Centre has survived in its present form, therefore it can still do a lot of good things for Polis science”, he concludes.

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Join our webinar during which we will talk about temporary relaxation of NCN’s Open Access Policy and answer questions and queries of researchers and administrative staff.

The meeting will be held on 30 October 2023, between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., in Polish, on the ClickMeeting platform. During the webinar, we will interpret the letter published on our website on 16 October 2023. There will also be time for a Q&As session.

The meeting will be hosted by Dr Aneta Pazik-Aybar and Gabriela Czarny from our Open Science Team.

Pursuant to the ClickMeeting platform licence, up to 500 people may participate in the meeting.

The webinar is organised for information purposes only and no certificates of participation will be issued.

The academic community speaks up: “I am assuming that the new government will radically rewrite the budget for next year. I can’t even imagine it won’t start by increasing the NCN subsidy”, says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki in an interview for “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

“Gazeta Wyborcza”’s Alicja Gardulska asked academics about their post-electoral expectations for change in research and higher education.

“For the past six years, we have been kept on the breadline. The NCN call budget has stood still; the subsidies have failed to cover even the rise of inflation. And after all, the NCN funds research by the most  internationally recognised and active researchers working in Poland”, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN’s acting Director, confesses in the interview.

“There is a lot of room for change in the higher education and research budget. The government needs to take a close look at what the current minister had in store. There are many expenses that can be cut down”, he adds.

Prof. Błocki hopes that the new government will increase spending on innovation and the institutions of the research environment that have been established in recent years. Hopefully, he says, we will finally see an end to political interference in science: “We can’t have a minister personally decide which projects are funded and which are not”.

In the same article, the following people also weigh in on the NCN:

Prof. Marcin Pałys, President of the Main Council of Science and Higher Education

“We need to increase funding for the National Science Centre since, because of insufficient budget resources, it is now unable to deliver on its important mission. On the other hand, we need to take a look at the National Centre for Research and Development and clear up all the doubts around it. This is an institution with a really huge budget and its credibility needs to be restored.”

Prof. Marek Konarzewski, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences

“ … we need to avert any attempts to close down the NCN; it should be untouchable. And we need to address the issues that plague the NCBiR.”

The article was published on 20 October.

Director’s speech

Professor Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director, also called for changes in research policy on 11 October during the 2023 NCN Award ceremony.

A research component proposed by Prof. Ronald Borr from the Netherlands was recommended for funding by the NCN in cooperation with the National Agency for Academic Exchange under the “NAWA Chair” programme. Professor Borr will join the staff of the Medical University of Gdańsk to work on a project “Perfusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PWI), Optical Fluorescence imaging-guided surgery (FGS), Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Federated Learning (FL)”. This is the last component that will be funded under the programme.

Previously, NCN funds were awarded to Prof. Tomasz Taylor from the US and Prof. Brendan Kennedy from Australia.

The second edition of NAWA Chair was targeted at universities and research centres conducting research in life sciences, engineering, technology, medicine, health science and agriculture.

Within the framework of the programme, Polish universities will host three outstanding foreign researchers who will carry out research projects that address current civilizational challenges. Importantly, each project includes a research component funded by the National Science Centre. Visiting scholars will form project groups and actively apply for national and international grants.

On 11 October, the 2023 NCN Awards were handed out. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk about this most prestigious distinction for early-stage researchers working in Poland and research conducted by this year’s winners.

2023 NCN Award winners: Katharina Boguslawski, Łukasz Opaliński, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, photo credit: Michał Łepecki

Prof. Katharina Boguslawski, Prof. Łukasz Opaliński and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska are the winners of the eleventh edition of NCN Awards. Prof. Boguslawski is a quantum chemist working at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and member of the Polish Young Academy, PAS. Prof. Łukasz Opaliński is a molecular biologist from the University of Wrocław and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska specialises in cultural studies, Czech studies and ethnology at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Science.

Award ceremony footage

Our guests today are Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, member of the NCN Council and NCN Award jury panel.

Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska from the Polish Academy of Sciences specialises in memory studies and studies of objects and cultures of the so-called “Recovered Territories”. She looks at how the process of resettling areas previously inhabited by German and German-speaking communities unfolded in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. She says her research is about the “entanglement of time”, or the way in which the past continues to influence the present and the future.

Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz

She talks about her research to Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.

Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek talks about the principles guiding the jury’s selection procedure and amendment of the award regulations aiming to promote gender equality in science. The amended regulations will come into force next year.

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CHIST-ERA Call 2022 winners include three international research proposals submitted in cooperation with Polish researchers. Polish teams will get a total of more than 4 million zlotys in funding to pursue projects in the field of communication and information technologies.

The CHIST-ERA network awarded grants to a total of twelve international proposals submitted by teams from as many as 22 different countries. Eight fall under the “Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SpiDDS)” track, and four under “Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI, WAI”. Three projects include Polish teams; Poland is the leader of the international consortium in one and a member in the other two.

RANKING LIST

A Polish team headed by Dr hab. Marcin Pawłowski from the International Centre for the Theory of Quantum Technologies at the University of Gdańsk will coordinate a project entitled “MoDIC, Modern Device Independent Cryptography”. The purpose is to shore up the theoretical foundations of device independent quantum cryptography for practical applications. The researchers are planning to conduct new non-classicality tests, improve security proofs and develop new experimental configurations, working in cooperation with partners from Switzerland, France and Hungary. The Polish team will receive more than 2.3 million zlotys in funding from the NCN.

Prof. Hanna Bogucka from the Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications of the Poznań University of Technology and her team will join Project PASSIONATE (“Physics-based Wireless AI Providing Scalability and Efficiency”), coordinated by Spain, in cooperation with partners from Finland, France, Luxembourg and Poland. The researchers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to design wireless network architecture, integrating software-based solutions (algorithms and simulations) and equipment experiments (programmable radio devices). The budget of the Polish part of the project comes up to nearly 787 thousand zlotys.

The third Polish winner of CHIST-ERA Call 2022 is Dr hab. inż. Szymon Szott, who will head a team at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, working on a project entitled “MLDR: A Machine Learning-Driven Radio Interface”. The researchers will employ AI and machine-learning (AI/ML) techniques to boost the efficiency of next-generation wireless networks. The goal is to build a new machine learning-driven radio interface (MLDR), without the limitations of currently available wireless techniques. The research will be conducted by an international consortium led by Spain including, alongside Poland, partners from Finland and France. The Polish team will receive a total of nearly 871 thousand zlotys in funding.

CHIST-ERA Call 2022 was open to research proposals submitted by international consortia made up of at least three teams from at least three different participating countries. The PI of the Polish team had to have at least a PhD degree. Joint proposals were evaluated by two separate international expert teams, each appointed for one of the call’s two tracks: Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SPiDDS) and Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI (WAI).

Please join us at the EOSC Festival – the National Tripartite Event Poland during which we will discuss, inter alia, the Widening Countries’ perspective of the future of EOSC. 

The event will be held on 6 and 7 November 2023 at the Headquarters of the National Science Centre in Krakow. The first day will be streamed online. 

The EOSC festival is related to the National Science Centre’s participation in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), also as the national representative in the EOSC Association, and is intended to:

• present the European Open Science Cloud
• enhance cooperation and dialogue between key EOSC stakeholders in Poland and in the region
• discuss the directions of EOSC strategic development
• increase EOSC’s visibility in Poland, i.e., by notifying the national academic community of the implementation of EOSC in Poland   

 The festival will be officially opened on 6 November 2023, at 11 a.m. in the Headquarters of the National Science Centre at ul. Twardowskiego 16 in Krakow.

Short Agenda

Monday, 6 November (11 a.m. – 6 p.m.)

• Welcome and introduction to the first day  
• Polish Open Science Policy and the EOSC Tripartite Governance
• EOSC Landscape in Poland
• EOSC and Open Science Policies: priorities and implementation
• The future of EOSC

Tuesday, 7 November (10 a.m. – 3 p.m.)

• Welcome and introduction to the second day  
• The key challenges of EOSC in the Widening Countries
• EOSC Poland Network: Polish institutions towards the future of EOSC

Contact details: Open Science Team, email: otwarta.nauka@ncn.gov.pl

In response to the requests of the academic community and recent changes in publisher policy, the NCN has decided to temporarily relax the provisions of the “Policy of the National Science Centre on open access to publications” until 31 December 2025.

The National Science Centre strongly supports open-science initiatives, including campaigns to ensure open access to research data and publications. Open science is an essential aspect of research development in accordance with the highest standards of research integrity, as evidenced by the dynamic efforts undertaken in this area in the international arena. The principles of open science have already been implemented by various institutions involved in shaping research policy and funding research across the globe, such as the European Commission and Science Europe.

The NCN analyses information coming from the research community and monitors annual and final project reports, as well as publisher policies. At the same time, to guarantee scientific excellence, we strive to ensure that all publications based on NCN project results are published by international publishers who put an emphasis on high-quality peer review.

In addition, the NCN reasserts its commitment to observing and monitoring the development of global open-access practices.

The numerical success rate for the NCN calls in which results are to be announced in early December will be a single digit. “This is a great blow to Polish research, but we need to be clear about why this is happening. The budget situation at the NCN right now is tragic”, says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, the NCN Director.

OPUS is the NCN’s flagship call, open to researchers at all career levels. It gets more than half of the NCN’s budget resources. PRELUDIUM is targeted at the youngest researchers, who have yet to earn their PhD.

OPUS 25 and PRELUDIUM 22 were launched in March. The projects are currently under review, with results scheduled to be published in early December. Based on the proposals that were submitted, however, we can already estimate that the financial success rate will fall somewhere around 10%, and the numerical figure will be a single digit.

Grants will be awarded to just a few percent of researchers who applied for funding to pursue their research plans and ideas.

“This is a hard hit for researchers. We have always protested whenever the success rate dropped below 20% and it is now already below that of the ERC”, the NCN director says. “Nearly 2.2 thousand proposals with a total budget of almost 3 billion zlotys were submitted under OPUS 25. In PRELUDIUM 22, a similar number of proposals requested a total of more than 300 million zlotys. And our budget for the two calls is just 335 million.”

“I think we should consider adding a footnote to all negative funding decisions, like the one we get on our electricity bills, which tells us, e.g., to whom we owe this or that discount. It looks like the NCN will need to tell researchers who won’t get a grant why they didn’t get it despite submitting a very good proposal that absolutely deserved to be funded”, the director comments.

We have already raised the alarm that the NCN call budget has hardly increased over the past six years. In the same period, the sum requested by applicants grew by several dozen percent.

An appeal issued in June by the NCN Director and the President of the NCN Council, which asked the Minister of Education and Science to increase NCN’s funding by 300 million zlotys, has gone unheeded.

At the same time, the draft budget bill for 2024, submitted to the Sejm at the end of September, includes a 2.3 billion increase in spending on science and education. “The government did find enough additional resources for science, but despite its dire need, the NCN got nothing”, says Professor Błocki.

Out of these additional resources, 1.8 billion were slated, i.e., for additional subsidies. The budget of ministerial programmes was increased by 87 million, that of the Łukasiewicz Research Network by 60 million, with 122 million going to “other activities”.