The transformation of social relations resulting from the digitalisation of homes, the communication of knowledge about health in the 20th and 21st centuries and challenges for work safety in  times of digital transformation will be addressed by researchers awarded in the CHANSE Call. 12 out of 26 projects will be carried out by Polish researchers.

CHANSE (Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe) is pleased to announce that 26 international projects have been selected for funding in the Call: Transformations: Social and cultural dynamics in the digital age, including two topics:

• Cultural Transformations in the Digital Age,
• Digitalisation and Social Transformation.

The aim of launching the CHANSE Call was to fund high quality research responding to current social and cultural challenges and to inspire collaboration between researchers and various stakeholder groups, such as: NGOs, cultural institutions, schools and many others. The call received an enthusiastic response from the research community in the social sciences and humanities. 366 outline proposals were submitted by international research teams composed of at least 4 Principal Investigators, out of which 90 were invited to the second evaluation stage. Finally 26 projects were selected for funding. The winning projects included 12 research teams from Poland, as well as one project DigiPatch with the Polish Project Leader Prof Małgorzata Kossowska, addressing the issue of patchwork societies. The future grantees have noted that in addition to changes in human relations, addressed by the DigiPatch project, digitalisation affects many aspects of human life, such as public health, logistics or religious practices. Funding will be awarded to research projects addressing such issues as the impact of COVID-19 on the digitalisation of European religious communities, role of home digitalisation or social science automation.

The list of selected projects with the participation of Polish researchers

The full list of selected projects

One of CHANSE’s goals is to promote the principle of equal participation of women and men in the research teams, which was applied to the selection criteria for applications recommended for funding. Among projects ranked ex-aequo on the ranking list, priority was given to those with the most gender-balanced composition of the research team. Another important priority of the Programme is to enhance the participation of countries where the level of research and innovation is lower than the EU average (the so-called widening countries). In the group of 27 agencies that created CHANSE, as many as 12 are from the widening countries. Additionally, some of them perform important roles in the Programme as task leaders – ETAg (Estonia) and UEFISCDI (Romania), and the coordinator – NCN. CHANSE strives to ensure inclusiveness in research not only at the application selection stage, in which the widening factor was as important as the gender balance criterion, but also at the initial stage of the formation of research groups. Researchers  from all countries were offered the Partner Search Tool, which is aimed at facilitating the establishment of international project consortia, which also fostered cooperation with partners from the widening countries.

CHANSE is an ERA-NET Programme bringing together 27 research funding organisations from 24 countries. The Programme builds on the experience of two existing networks: HERA (https://heranet.info/)  and NORFACE (https://www.norface.net/) supporting research in humanities and social sciences respectively.

Contact:

chanse@ncn.gov.pl

50 projects with a total budget of over 48 Million PLN will be carried out by researchers from all continents. They will move to Poland under the POLONEZ BIS 1 call.

151 proposals were submitted in the recently concluded first call under POLONEZ BIS programme. Following the eligibility check and evaluation by international experts and reviewers, 50 projects were recommended for funding. The call’s success rate is 33.1%. NCN will fund 27 (54%) projects in science and technology, 14 (28%) in humanities and social sciences and 9 (18%) in life sciences.

RANKING LISTS

RANKING LISTS (PDF)

Scientists awarded under the POLONEZ BIS 1 call will move to Poland from all continents, from countries such as Germany, France, China, Australia, USA, Argentina and Egypt. The National Science Centre and the European Commission have committed a total of 48 Million PLN to fund projects in this call.

We would like to remind that POLONEZ BIS 2 call for research proposals is open until the 15 June, and POLONEZ BIS 3 is scheduled to launch on 15 September 2022.

Decisions sent

Decisions for the POLONEZ BIS 1 proposals after the second stage of evaluation were sent out on 25 May 2022.

Please note that decisions of the Director of the National Science Centre are served in the form of an electronic document sent to the e-mail address provided by the applicant in the proposal or their Electronic Correspondence Delivery Box (ESP ePUAP) address if it was specified.

Information was sent from the address: ncn.wnioski@ncn.gov.pl. and contains a link to download the decision of the Director of the National Science Centre.

If you have any problems with access to the document, please contact the POLONEZ BIS Team at polonez@ncn.gov.pl. The status of your proposal is also displayed in the OSF system.

Two life scientists and a mathematician succeed in the fourth call against a strong field of applicants from around the world 

Mikołaj Frączyk, Przemysław Nogły and Mateusz Sikora will establish three new Dioscuri Centres at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The three Polish-born scientists, currently working in Germany, Switzerland and the US, will return to Poland over the next year and a half thanks to support from the Dioscuri Programme. The winners of the fourth international call for Dioscuri Centres published by the Max Planck Society and the National Science Centre Poland (NCN) will join the five Dioscuri Centres already established in Warsaw.

Portrait of the three new Dioscuri Centre leaders

Portrait of Mikołaj Frączyk, newly selected leader of the Dioscuri Centre in Random Walks in Geometry and Topology: © Private Mikołaj Frączyk, currently Dickson Instructor at the University of Chicago, first studied Pure Mathematics at Jagiellonian University in Krakow before moving to the Université Paris-Sud in France. After completing his award-winning doctoral thesis in 2017 in France, he stayed as a post-doc at the Renyi Institute in Budapest and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In fall 2023, Frączyk will establish a Dioscuri Centre in Random Walks in Geometry and Topology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at the Jagiellonian University. He will be supported by his partner from Germany, Roman Sauer from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

What motivated you to apply for a Dioscuri Centre and set up your new research group in Poland?

Mikołaj Frączyk: The Dioscuri programme offered a very attractive opportunity to return. The conditions of the grant make international collaboration very easy and the opportunity to create a research team that early in the career would be hard to find elsewhere.

What kind of research will you be conducting at your Dioscuri Centre?

Mikołaj Frączyk: The main objective of the Centre is to develop probabilistic and dynamical methods to attack several outstanding open problems concerning locally symmetric spaces, arithmetic lattices, mapping class groups and interval exchange transformation groups. The locally symmetric spaces, on which most of my research focused so far, are geometric objects with incredibly rich structure. Thanks to the attractive interdisciplinary nature of the research, the Dioscuri Centre will grow collaborations with local research groups in this active and competitive research field that is not yet strongly represented in Poland.

Portrait of Przemysław Nogły, newly selected leader of the Dioscuri Centre for Structural Dynamics of Receptors: © Pikyee Ma Starting in summer 2022, Przemysław Nogły, currently a research group leader and Ambizione Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation at ETH Zurich, will establish the Dioscuri Centre for Structural Dynamics of Receptors at the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology of the Jagiellonian University. After studying Chemistry at the University of Opole (Poland), the structural biologist went to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), where he received his PhD in structural biochemistry within the Marie Curie Initial Training Network in 2013. He then conducted research as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland) before moving to the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at ETH Zurich in 2017. Together with Joachim Heberle from Freie Universität Berlin, Nogły will use new experimental methods to investigate molecular mechanisms of proteins at his Dioscuri Centre.

What motivated you to apply for a Dioscuri Centre and set up your new research group in Poland?

Przemysław Nogły: After 14 years of my research work abroad, the idea to return to Poland was sparked by learning about the comprehensive framework of the Dioscuri Programme. The generous funding scheme supports ambitious projects, promotes links with distinguished German scientists and is co-organized by the Max Planck Society, long renowned for cultivating excellence in science. Another factor is Poland’s continuously improving scientific environment with developing infrastructure and its nurturing by the competitive and attractive research grants such as those organized by the National Science Centre.

What kind of research will you be conducting at your Dioscuri Centre?

Przemysław Nogły: While many receptors are extensively studied due to their omnipresent and critical function ranging from light energy harvesting to unleashing the healing potential of medicines, the DC will involve a recently developed methodology at X-ray Free Electron Lasers that allow unprecedented insights into structural dynamics and molecular mechanisms of proteins. Time-resolved crystallography will provide a series of structural snapshots at a high spatiotemporal resolution that can be assembled into a molecular movie of the protein in action.

Portrait of Mateusz Sikora, newly selected leader of the Dioscuri Centre for Modelling of Posttranslational Modifications: © Katarzyna Wrona Mateusz Sikora, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the MPI for Biophysics (Frankfurt) also affiliated with the University of Vienna, first studied at the Jagiellonian University and then earned his PhD at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. In 2012, he went to Austria as a postdoc at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST Austria). Since 2017, Sikora has been working at the MPI for Biophysics in Gerhard Hummer's group for theoretical biophysics within the framework of an Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship abroad funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF. In the future, Hummer will support Sikora as his German partner in the establishment of the Dioscuri Centre for Modeling of Post-translational Modifications at the Małopolska Centre of Biotechnology (at Jagiellonian University).

What motivated you to apply for a Dioscuri Centre and set up your new research group in Poland?

Mateusz Sikora: Science in Poland is going through an unprecedented boost, with a growing number of institutes being competitive and recognizable globally. While this makes Polish institutions an enticing choice to perform leading edge science, there are limited long-term solutions supporting young group leaders with challenging research ideas, making it harder to fully leverage the international experience and facilitate transfer of knowledge. I applied for the Dioscuri Programme because it provides this missing element, supporting my stay at one of the best institutes in the field (which happens to be in Poland) while giving me the freedom to focus on carrying out my research.

What kind of research will you be conducting at your Dioscuri Centre?

Mateusz Sikora: The ongoing anti-pandemic effort made it clear that computer simulations became indispensable in integrating and interpreting results of experiments and resolving molecular mechanisms and structures. Building on my previous experiences in simulating membrane protein complexes, my team and I will set up a simulation platform tailored to resolve the role of post-translational modifications (PTMs) in protein-protein interactions. Our biocomputational approach will help illuminate the molecular mechanisms of PTMs, which remain largely unknown due to experimental difficulties and the characteristics of PTMs. Since PTMs are potent cancer biomarkers, play a role in metastasis and are crucial in development of anti-cancer and anti-viral vaccines, our findings might have a broader impact.

Background: The Dioscuri Programme

The Dioscuri Programme, which was initiated by the Max Planck Society, aims to establish internationally competitive research groups in Central and Eastern Europe. Each of these Dioscuri Centres is financed with up to 1.5 million euros for a period of five years. The costs are shared equally between the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Polish Ministry of Education and Science (MEiN), while the host institutions in Poland provide the infrastructure. After its successful start in Poland, the program has recently been extended to the Czech Republic, where a first call for Czech Dioscuri Centres is currently open.

The first call for Dioscuri Centres in the Czech Republic is open to applicants of all nationalities and from all scientific disciplines, including the humanities, social sciences, life sciences and natural sciences, until 25 July 2022. For more information, please visit the call website.

A joint project of a Polish and Austrian research team has recently joined the list of winners of the Weave-UNISONO call. It will be allocated over 935,000 PLN by the NCN.

Entitled Classifying the Derivatives of the Axiom of Determinacy, the joint Polish-Austrian research project in Physical Sciences and Engineering received funding for the period of three years. The research team from the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, headed by Dr Grigor Sargsyan, together with researchers from Technische Universität Wien, will study mild objects in Derived Models. The main goal of the project is to classify these objects under the assumption of the existence of large cardinal numbers. The proposal was assessed by the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF) as the lead agency.

Weave-UNISONO

Weave-UNISONO is a call launched within the framework of a multilateral cooperation between research-funding institutions that make up the Science Europe association. It was launched to simplify submission and selection procedures for proposals in all disciplines of science, which bring together researchers from two or three different European countries.

The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for the merit-based revaluation of submitted proposals; the other partners agree to accept its results.

Under Weave, cooperating research teams submit their research proposals in parallel: to the lead agency and to the relevant domestic institutions participating in the programme. Their joint proposal must include a coherent research plan that clearly spells out the added value of international cooperation.

The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to carefully read the call announcement and submit their funding proposals.

Call announcement

Ranking list

The results of OPUS 22 and SONATA 17 are in. Winners will receive a total of nearly 740 million PLN to carry out 589 basic research projects at Polish research institutions.

The two recently concluded calls attracted 3005 proposals with a total budget of nearly 3.3 billion PLN; out of these, 589 were awarded funding, for an average success rate of 19.6%.

OPUS is a call targeted at a wide audience, placing no restrictions as to the career level, degree or research experience of the principal investigator. All applicants are subject to the same evaluation criteria, which include aspects such as scientific excellence, degree of innovation of the research problem, potential impact of the project on the academic discipline and academic and research track record of the principal investigator.

In this round of OPUS, alongside domestic research projects and projects conducted with foreign partners or with the use of large-scale international research equipment, applicants could also request funding under the Lead Agency Procedure within the framework of the Weave programme. This track allowed them to submit proposals prepared in cooperation with foreign research teams from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Germany or Switzerland, who submitted funding proposals to their respective domestic research-funding agencies that participate in the Weave programme.

Under OPUS 22, the NCN received 1866 submissions with a total budget of nearly 2.3 billion PLN. Funding was awarded to 350 projects, worth nearly 500 million. The success rate was 18.76%.

SONATA 17 is addressed at researchers who hold a PhD degree conferred 2 to 7 years before the proposal submission year; its objective is to support those at the outset of their careers in innovative research. This round of the call attracted 1139 proposals with a total budget of more than 1 billion PLN. In the end, funding was awarded to 239 projects worth more than 240 million PLN. The success rate for SONATA 17 was 20.98%.

The greatest number of successful projects under the two calls, i.e. 243 projects with a total budget of more than 294.3 million PLN, fell under the Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST). Funding was also awarded to 196 projects in Life Sciences (NZ), with a total budget of nearly 345 million, and 150 projects in Art, Humanities and Social Sciences (HS), worth more than 100.2 million in total.

Ranking lists

One problem – many viewpoints

Problems tackled by the winners of the two calls will include issues such as environmental protection. Under SONATA 17, the subject is represented by a project entitled Nature protection area Natura 2000 as a multispecies network of dependencies. Non-obvious relations in anthropological perspective, headed by Dr Małgorzata Kowalska from the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań. Within the NZ panel, Dr inż Jacek Olchowik from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences will carry out a project entitled What don’t we know about private forests? Monitoring of ectomycorrhizal fungal diversity in different forest management regimes in the metagenomic approach in order to study the level of biodiversity in forest ecosystems and the diversity and composition of ECM mushrooms in private forests. Under the ST panel, Dr Oskar Głowacki from the Institute of Geophysics, PAS, will tackle the problem of climate change and glacier melting in a project entitled Studying glacier calving fluxes and calving styles through a novel combination of acoustic and optical methods.

The issue of energy will be addressed from different angles by several OPUS 22 projects. Under the HS panel, Dr hab. Sławomir Śmiech from the Cracow University of Economics will analyse the problem of energy poverty in terms of its profiles, gravity and dynamics. Prof. Dr hab. Dariusz Jakubas from the University of Gdańsk, who falls under the NZ panel, will carry out a project entitled What really matters for a high-Arctic zooplanktivorous seabird foraging in a rapidly changing environment: prey size or energy content? Representing the ST panel, Dr hab. inż. Magdalena Jaremkiewicz from the Cracow University of Technology will investigate a system of monitoring the thermal and strength performance of pressure components of power units.

All the problems addressed by the winners of OPUS 22 and SONATA 17 can be found via our ranking lists.

Proposal evaluation

Proposals in all NCN calls are evaluated by experts selected from among prominent Polish and international researchers with at least a PhD degree. The process is divided into two stages. Each encompasses at least two individual reviews of each proposal and a session of an expert team, during which the reviews are discussed before final ranking lists of projects recommended for funding are prepared. The final decision is taken by the NCN Director.

OPUS LAP proposals were evaluated together with all other OPUS projects by the same expert teams, but additional review criteria included the research record of the foreign partner team and their other research projects; evaluators also verified whether the contribution of all teams to the project was balanced and complementary.

OPUS ranking lists do not include OPUS LAP projects recommended for funding by expert teams at the National Science Centre, which are undergoing an approval procedure at relevant partner agencies.

Practical information

Today, we will dispatch all positive and negative decisions for calls submitted under OPUS 22 and SONATA 17. Please remember that the decisions of the NCN Director are sent electronically to the address indicated in the proposal.

If the applicant is an entity mentioned in art. 27 (1)-(7) and (9) of the Act on the NCN, the decision will only be delivered to the Electronic Inbox (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 system.

27 Polish researchers will soon be able to start their preliminary and pilot studies, library and archive searches, as well as fellowships and consultation visits with the support of NCN funding. We have published the first raking list for the sixth edition of the MINIATURA call for single research activities. Studies of current social and economic affairs are among research activities recommended for funding. Dr Sonia Dzierzyńska-Breś from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań will analyse the stories of children with incarcerated parents and Dr Joanna Smoluk-Sikorska from the University of Life Sciences in Poznań will focus analyse the price relations on the Polish organic food market. Wildlife topics related to forests and waters will also be addressed. Dr Wojciech Piaszczyk from the University of Agriculture in Krakow will study the role of tilia cordata in stabilising soil organic matter and affecting microbiological activity of forest soil and Dr Magdalena Maciuszek from the Jagiellonian University will research fish neutrophil polarisation. All subject-matters of research activities recommended for funding are available on the ranking list.

Funding under individual panels:

• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: 178,724 PLN
• Physical Sciences and Engineering: 514,028 PLN
• Life Sciences: 344,804 PLN

Ranking list

The main objective of the MINIATURA call is to finance research activities conducted for the purposes of future research projects that will be submitted under NCN calls or other national or international calls. The sixth edition offer grants ranging between 5,000 PLN and 50,000 PLN, and the total budget is 20 million PLN. 

The resources are being proportionally distributed throughout the entire call and proposals may be recommended for funding only as long as there are enough funds in the pool of resources slated for a given month. Since a lot of proposals are often submitted in the last month of the call, we urge you not to postpone your decision to participate in MINIATURA until the last moment.

Preliminary/pilot studies, library and archive searches, fellowships, research visits and/or consultations for a period of up to 12 months may be requested by researchers who earned their PhD no earlier than on 1 January 2009, have not acted as principal investigators in research projects funded by the National Science Centre and whose scientific achievements include at least one paper published or at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art. Researchers who will carry out a research activity must not have been winners of any calls for doctoral scholarships or fellowships funded by the NCN or applicants, principal investigators or fellowship candidates in proposals submitted to other NCN calls or recommended for funding under other NCN calls. They must also be employed by the host institution for a research activity on the day they submit their proposals.  

The proposals are accepted on a rolling basis until 31 July 2022, 4 p.m. 

Decision

On 18 May 2022, the NCN will dispatch the positive and the negative decisions for proposals submitted under MINIATURA 6 in February 2022.

The justifications are available in the OSF submission system where you can also check the status of your proposal.

The decisions are served on the applicants in electronic form to the ESP ePUAP address indicated in the proposal. If you have not received a decision, please make sure that the address listed in the proposal is correct. If it is not, contact the NCN officer in charge of the proposal named in the OSF submission system.

The ERC Mentoring Initiative Information Day will soon be organised to disseminate information on the initiative addressed at researchers intending to participate in the ERC calls for proposals.

The ERC Mentoring Initiative is aimed at researchers from countries where the success rates in ERC calls for proposals have been so far modest, e.g. Poland. A database of mentors has been compiled, comprising former ERC evaluation panel members and ERC call winners. They will support researchers participating in the ERC calls for proposals by helping them to write research proposals. The NCN allows its grant winners to fund the cost of participation in the Initiative with the funds awarded under Polish research projects.

During the event, the main objectives and rules of the ERC Mentoring Initiative will be presented.

Date and time: 19 May 2022, 10 a.m. – noon

The meeting will be held online. You can register here:  www.kpk.gov.pl/wydarzenia/dzien-informacyjny-erc-mentoring-initiative

The meeting is organised by the Polish National Contact Point at the National Centre for Research and Development.

“We visit all important research institutions in Poland” said prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director at the University of Białystok during the NCN Days held in Podlasie on 11 and 12 May 2022.

Fot. Tomasz Hodun dla NCN

The purpose of the event is to promote the National Science Centre and encourage researchers at various stages of their research career from various research institutions to participate in the calls for proposals launched by the National Science Centre and help them write funding proposals. The NCN Days are held on a regular basis, each year in a different location. This year’s event was co-organised by research institutions from Podlasie: the University of Białystok, Medical University of Białystok, Białystok University of Technology and Mammal Biology Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Białowieża. 

The NCN Director said that impartial research and independent grant agencies supporting the best research projects are characteristic of democratic countries. “The NCN has successfully fulfilled that role for over 10 years. We have introduced well-recognised standards and perceive Polish science as part of global science rather than an isolated island. We are internationally active”, said Prof. Błocki during the opening meeting. He also said that an independent research agency was crucial to the future of Polish science. 

A research centre with aspirations

Between 2011-2021, research institutions from the Podlasie Region (województwo podlaskie) received a total number of 435 NCN grants, with over 100 grants awarded to researchers without a PhD degree. The success rate was 18 percent.

Fot. Tomasz Hodun dla NCN

“I hope that as a result of our meeting, researchers employed at the higher education institutions in Białystok will be able to get more grants and funds from the National Science Centre”, said Prof. Robert Ciborowski, Rector of the University of Białystok.

“We are here for you!” said Prof. Jacek Kuźnicki, President of the NCN Council. He said that it was the NCN’s purpose to “support the best research and researchers to pursue it”. “We do our best to make sure that funds for research are equally distributed. We cannot influence the quality of proposals received but can support research institutions with aspirations that have not fully used their research potential”, he added. The President of the NCN Council talked about, inter alia, the workshops for applicants organised by the NCN and the role of administrative staff employed at the research institutions and universities who help to write funding proposals (“This is one of the key issues that we must not save money on”). Prof. Kuźnicki also claimed that it was necessary for universities to attract researchers from other institutions, including principal investigators in NCN research projects, and to create conditions for new research teams to be established. He tried to discourage research institutions from rewarding researchers for the mere fact of submitting funding proposals. “We don’t think it is a good solution. Researchers should be rewarded for receiving funding and, even more so, for their research achievements and publications in prestigious academic press/ journals”, he said.

Fot. Tomasz Hodun dla NCN During the two-day event, a meeting was held by the NCN management and Council with the scientific community of the region and discussions on the NCN grant portfolio. Most of the sessions were practical. Grant winners working in Białystok and Białowieża delivered lectures and speeches; there were information meetings concerning national and international NCN calls and workshops for researchers and administrative staff of the universities. During the workshops on open access and NCN Open Access Policy, the coordinators said that “Open access publication increases researchers’ trust in the research outcome, increases the visibility of research and researchers in the world. It is very important for the NCN. Open access is a world trend that we want to pursue in Poland”. There was a meeting dedicated to POLONEZ BIS, a programme for researchers working in foreign research institutions intending to pursue their research in Poland.

The NCN Days have been held since 2013. The event was already held in, inter alia, Lublin, Olsztyn and Gdańsk. The last event was held in Łódź in 2019. The NCN Days in Białystok were scheduled for 2020 but due to the COVID pandemic they were cancelled. The next NCN Days in 2023 will be held in Wrocław.

Galeria zdjęć

Between 2011-2021, research institutions from the Podlasie Region received a total number of 435 NCN grants, with most of them in the OPUS call (141 projects received funding), MINIATURA (128) and PRELUDIUM (108). The Podlasie Region received the largest number of grants (75) in 2017.

Over the decade, the success rate achieved by the research institutions from Podlasie was 18% (the average success rate for Poland is 21%). The highest efficiency was achieved by the Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences (47%).

The highest rate of success was achieved by the Podlasie in 2011 (33%), 2017 (29%), and 2019 (22%). The success rate in the NCN calls that ended in 2021 was 18%.

The Mammal Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences is the most efficient institution (47%), while the University of Białystok is the most active institution among those applying for NCN funding and has been awarded the largest number of grants (179 grants for over 59,000,000 PLN).

 

News on NCN Days published to date

2022 NCN Days Programme

NCN in Białystok - first announcement

Related news

Grants may promote decentralisation

A good start for young researchers

 

They are coming from Kiyv, Kharkiv, Lviv and other Ukrainian cities. They will be working at Polish research centres. The NCN has just announced the results of a special programme targeted at scientists who are fleeing the war in Ukraine. Grants will go to more than 50 researchers.

This special programme from the National Science Centre is targeted at Ukrainian scientists, as well as any other researchers, regardless of citizenship, who have sought or will seek refuge in Poland in the wake of the Russian aggression. The National Science Centre will finance their year-long stay at Polish academic and research institutions, providing funding for salaries and research costs. The programme covers both basic and applied research. In this round, Poland will soon welcome 38 female and 13 male researchers.

Sharing experiences and growth

Olha Lukovska w Lwowskim Pałacu Sztuki “The NCN programme doesn’t stop at providing financial support; it also creates an excellent opportunity for researchers to cooperate and work together within academic and creative communities. This is incredibly important for all researchers, especially for artists”, says Dr hab. Olha Lukovska, professor at the Ukrainian Academy of Printing in Lviv and the deputy director of the Lviv Art Palace, who is set to arrive at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław in May. As an artist, she specialises in art textiles. She has had individual exhibitions in several countries across Europe and Japan, worked as a curator, and sat on the jury in various competitions. Her research interests centre around trends in contemporary culture and the arts.

In the past, the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław and the Ukrainian Academy of Printing have jointly organised open-air workshops and exhibitions of works by their students and professors; researchers from both centres regularly take part in conferences and seminars devoted to the development of contemporary art, and the two schools are partners under Erasmus+. “From the very first days of the war, I was receiving calls and messages from friends at the Academy and all over Poland, offering to help me and my family. In these special conditions, I met many new people”, says the artist. Together with the Wrocław-based team, Professor Lukovska hopes to put her stay at the Academy to good use, cementing Polish-Ukrainian cooperation in the field of art education and promoting the integration of the creative communities of the two countries. “I want to build up my experience in organising international partnerships in the area of higher education. I hope that Ukraine will join the European Union, and our students, researchers and artists will soon be able to grow and exchange their experiences”, she explains.

After the war broke out, students and professors at art schools throughout Poland, including the Academies of Fine Art in Wrocław and Łódź, joined hands in an effort to deliver assistance to those fighting on the front lines and began to weave camouflage nets. Asked about the situation in Lviv, Professor Lukovska replies that she hardly knows “a single person or institution in town that would not be involved in helping the army, the territorial defence troops, or the refugees”. “In wartime, everyone needs to learn a new trade. We produce so-called kikimoras, nets that are very woolly and popular on the front lines”, she says. Classes at the Ukrainian Academy of Printing are currently held online, as many of its students and researchers have left the country. No research can be done. The artist adds that the weaving of nets is often interrupted by air raids. “But we continue making them anyway, because we know that activities of this kind bring our country closer to victory.”

Goal: integration with the European research community

Olena Berehova w Filharmonii Narodowej w Warszawie “The aim of my research project is to expand the dialogue of cultures between Ukraine and Poland in the field of musicology and, more broadly, the humanities, and to further integrate Ukraine into the European scientific community”, says Prof. Olena Berehova from the Institute of Cultural Research of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. The researcher is a musicologist, journalist and teacher; she is also a member of the National Union of Composers of Ukraine. She has published several monographs and more than seventy articles in peer-reviewed journals on, e.g. late 20th- and early 21st-century Ukrainian and European music and culture. Her interests centre on Polish-Ukrainian relations in the field of music and musicology. She has frequently taken part in conferences organised by musicology researchers from various regions of Poland and organised a seminar on Polish-Ukrainian cultural dialogue, which took place four years ago in Kiyv. She will spend the coming months at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “I plan to take part in several international musicological conferences and seminars and prepare for publication several articles in leading musicological journals in Poland. The second component of my project is to study the experience of organising scientific work and research and publishing activities at the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences in order to further implement this experience in Ukraine”, she adds.

Asked if she had applied for a grant to any other institution or foundation in Poland or beyond, she answers in the negative. “In my opinion, the grant programme of the National Science Centre provides real opportunities for scientists from Ukraine to continue their research until the end of martial law in Ukraine,” she says.

Some of the staff of her institute in Kiyv stayed in town, some relocated to other regions or moved abroad. The authorities of the institute are doing their best to enable it to soon operate online. Not all employees, however, have access to the internet.

Professor Berehova reports that she has felt warmly welcome in Poland “from the first moment”. The authorities and the staff of the Institute of Art at PAS introduced her to the team and provided support to her family. “I feel the incredible uplift, unity and solidarity of Poles with Ukrainians, who are courageously fighting not only for the territorial integrity and independence of their state, but also for European and universal civilisational values, which are the nation's right to self-determination, freedom, democracy and human rights”, she adds.

Research in a safe environment

Tetiana Sladkovska Dr Tetiana Sladkovska is an Assistant Professor at the Zhytomyr National Agroecological University. In her work, she analyses the factors that affect the crops of perennial grasses and their possible uses in phytoremediation (removal of environmental pollutants). In the nearest future, she will be conducting her research at the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences. “The choice of location was rather obvious, considering my previous experience. I knew that the University would provide excellent conditions for me to pursue my research projects”, she says. Since the fall of 2020, as a holder of scholarships from the Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences and the National Agency for Academic Exchange, she has already visited the University four times. She has taken part in research in post-mining areas with high water salinity to develop innovative methods of crop fertilisation and investigated sports turfs. She returned to Poland after the outbreak of the war. “Luckily, my university in Zhytomyr has not been destroyed during the bombardment of the city”, she says. Classes were initially suspended and preparations are underway to restart them online, but it is still unclear what the prospects for research might be. “Thanks to the NCN programme, I can continue my work in a safe environment”, she adds. She also emphasises that everyone in Wrocław “tries to help as much as they possibly can”. Dr Sladkovska will participate in international projects and carry out independent field experiments to investigate the use of leguminous and fodder grasses in interventional forage production on permanent pastures. “Permanent pastures not only perform a fodder function, they also play the role in climate regulation, allow biodiversity to be preserved and serve as a cornerstone for nature. Modern meadow production has to be considered in economical, ecological and social measurements”, she says.

Researchers awarded NCN grants may participate in the ERC Mentoring Initiative launched by the European Research Council.

The National Science Centre, together with the National Centre for Research and Development, Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange and Foundation for Polish Science, has joint an initiative coordinated in Poland by the Polish National Contact Point. The agencies have allowed their grant winners to apply under the ERC Mentoring Initiative and fund their participation in the Initiative with the funds awarded under Polish research projects.

The initiative is targeted at researchers from countries where the success rates in ERC calls for proposals have been so far modest, e.g. Poland. A database of mentors has been compiled, comprising former ERC evaluation panel members and ERC call winners. Their aim is to support researchers participating in the ERC calls for proposals by helping them to write research proposals. 

Rules of procedure

Agencies allow their call winners to participate in the ERC Mentoring Initiative in so far as they meet the ERC grant requirements: Starting Grants (2-7 years of experience since completion of PhD), Consolidator Grant (7-9 years of experience since completion of PhD) and Advanced Grants (for researchers who have a track-record of significant research achievements in the last 10 years).

Researchers may apply for their respective grants to the Polish National Contact Point at the National Centre for Research and Development. Having reviewed the information provided, the Polish National Contact Point will name mentors from the database delivered by the ERC and connect the applicant and mentor. Researchers together with their mentors will specify the scope of mentoring within the framework of applicable rules laid down in the full project description.

This is an ongoing call; proposals are submitted via an interactive form. 

Terms and Conditions of the Initiative