Medical diagnostics will be faster and more accurate, online data security will get incomparably better and we already see the advent of new materials with properties that are nothing short of revolutionary. Scientists predict the development of quantum technologies will redefine our reality within the next ten to twenty years.

Today, the world is witnessing a rapid growth in these technologies, and Europe wants to become its first “Quantum Valley”. With their impressive record of foundational research and increasing focus on experimental results, Polish researchers are among some of the leading scientists in the field. Poland is also the coordinator of QuantERA, the largest European quantum research-funding network. Now, researchers are hoping Poland will soon adopt a long-term quantum technology development strategy modelled on programmes already in place in other countries.

First Quantu QuantERA Strategic Conference, Kraków 2022 | Photo by Błażej Górczyński m Valley

Five years ago, the European Union started one of the most important endeavours in the field of research and innovation: the Quantum Technologies Flagship, with a budget of more than a billion, designed to put Europe at the forefront of quantum technology development. In December 2023, 15 states adopted the European Declaration on Quantum Technologies; the signatories to the agreement included, e.g. Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden, but also Central European countries such as Hungary and Romania. They underscored the strategic importance of quantum technologies for the scientific and industrial competitiveness of the EU and committed to working together to turn Europe into the global leader for quantum excellence and innovation.

Last month, representatives of the Quantum Technologies Flagship presented a new quantum development agenda 2030, in which they defined their ultimate goal as turning Europe into the world’s first “Quantum Valley” thanks to its scientific and industrial potential, qualified workforce and multi-billion investments. “Many concepts and ideas in quantum technology were born on our continent”, says Prof. Konrad Banaszek, a world-renowned expert in the field, winner of the MAB programme of the Foundation for Polish Science and author of multiple articles and patent applications.

The largest network with a seat in Poland

Prof. Konrad Banaszek is the scientific coordinator of the QuantERA funding initiative, the largest European programme developed to support quantum technology research, which works in close cooperation with the Quantum Flagship.

The QuantERA Network promotes and funds ambitious, foundational and cutting-edge engineering research projects in quantum technologies (QT), supports collaboration between researchers and research-funding agencies, monitors public policies and strategies in quantum technologies, and creates responsible research guidelines. The network brings together 41 research-funding agencies from 31 countries. Poland plays a key role within the organisation, as the network is coordinated by the National Science Centre. “We are well aware of what’s going on in quantum technologies, we know what projects are underway in Europe at the moment and, most importantly, we can influence the directions of development in the field”, comments Sylwia Kostka, the programme’s coordinator.

Since its establishment in 2016, one of the members of the Strategic Advisory Board of the network has been Prof. Alain Aspect, who, alongside Profs. John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, won the Nobel Prize for pioneering quantum information research in 2022. Poland is represented on the board by Prof. Marek Żukowski from the University of Gdańsk, a long-time collaborator of Prof. A. Zeilinger’s.

Thus far, QuantERA has funded more than 100 international basic and applied research projects carried out by nearly 550 research teams. In the last call, concluded at the end of 2023, the highest-ranked proposals included research into quantum imaging, colour-centre quantum sensors and quantum-dot single-photon sources.

Scientists from Polish research centres have been involved in nearly 40 of the projects funded by the network. “The fact that the NCN is its coordinator has placed us right at the centre of things and contributed to the promotion of the Polish quantum community”, says Dr Radek Łapkiewicz, Head of the Quantum Optics Lab at the University of Warsaw. Łapkiewicz studies how quantum effects can be used in imaging; he earned his PhD degree in Vienna, working with a team led by Prof. Anton Zeilinger, and specialised in experiments with entangled photons. In the 2023 QuantERA call, he won a grant for his applied research project entitled Quantum Multi-Modal Microscopy, which he will be working on with his collaborators from France, Germany and Switzerland.

When asked what changes quantum technologies may bring to imaging in the nearest future, Dr Łapkiewicz says that it would be only natural to use quantum instruments to move the frontiers of what can be done in biomedical imaging. “Advanced biomedical imaging is often limited by the amount of light available. For instance, if you want to look at the structures deep inside a tissue, it is often difficult to introduce enough light there in a non-invasive way and it is just as hard to detect the light coming out. Quantum optics scientists specialise in detecting even very weak light pulses, while quantum metrologists know how to plumb each photon for maximum information”, he explains, and then adds that the scientific community has already witnessed the first demonstrations of the quantum advantage and is now focused on trying to “find applications in imaging, where quantum technologies will prove the most useful”.

Dr inż. Anna Musiał from the Wrocław University of Technology heads the FiGanti project, bringing together scientists from Finland, Sweden, France and Germany. Working with an international consortium, she emphasises, allows her to explore the potential of her partners and contributes to boosting the recognisability of her university. “A good joint project is a very important boost to how a centre is perceived in Europe and the best form of advertising. Importantly, it is also an opportunity to exchange experiences when it comes to research, lab organisation and team work”, says Musiał.

Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies, University of Warsaw Outstanding achievements since the 1990s

Polish scientists have had an outstanding track record in terms of foundational research. A lot of theoretical work on quantum entanglement was done in the 1990s at the University of Gdańsk, where Prof. Ryszard Horodecki and his team built a lab that soon became the world’s chief centre of quantum information technology research. Research institutions in Warsaw and Kraków have had a long tradition of research into quantum optics, the springboard for most current research into new means of communication, detection, metrology and imaging. Scientists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń work at the FAMO Laboratory to develop next-generation optical atomic clocks, the world’s most precise time measurement devices, which can be used in geodesy and navigation. They also work on other quantum metrology applications.

Besides theory, Polish labs are also producing more and more experimental results. Last year, a team led by Dr hab. Michał Parniak from the Centre for Optical Quantum Technologies at the University of Warsaw, constructed a device that can convert quantum information between single microwave and optical photons. This device may become an infrastructure element for a quantum internet and find new applications in microwave radio astronomy. Also last year, another group, led by Dr Michał Karpiński from the Quantum Photonics Lab of the same university, developed a new technique of quantum information transfer that is several dozen times faster. Both inventions have opened up new technical avenues and the research results in question were published in a prestigious journal, Nature Photonics.

“All our research centres have enormous potential, as evidenced by their participation in European projects, publications, their awards, patents and industrial contacts”, estimates Prof. Konrad Banaszek.

The Polish quantum community is also tightening its internal cooperation. In May 2022, on the initiative of Prof. Banaszek, nearly 20 research institutions and economic entities set up Cluster Q – a Quantum Technologies Cluster, which now consists of nearly 30 members. The mission of the cluster is to develop quantum technology research and lend scientific and practical support to the entire Polish quantum industry.

Austria invests resources. Hungary starts a second quantum program

The “Quantum Technologies Public Policies, 2023” report, published by QuantERA, concludes that most European countries already recognise the potential benefits of quantum technologies and invest significant resources in developing their competitive advantage. Just three years earlier, only a few out of the 29 countries in the network had put national quantum technology development programmes in place. Today, most countries already have a strategy or at least a set of priorities, and five (Austria, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland) have slated significant domestic resources for the development of quantum technologies.

A lot of activity in this area can also be observed in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary has already developed its second domestic quantum technologies programme. Slovakia has set up a national centre, QUTE, designed to prepare the country for the quantum industry. Latvia has adopted a national strategy and developed the Latvian Quantum Initiative, which brings together scientists working in the field.

Poland is not a signatory to the European Declaration on Quantum Technologies of December 2023. Nor does it have a national strategy. “We have all the assets in hand, but we need a political decision to consolidate the idea that quantum technologies are a priority”, says Sylwia Kostka. Scientists hope that the document will be adopted in the nearest future. They have already held initial talks with representatives of the government which, the NCN coordinator argues, “could provide an impulse for further action”. The push for a strategy was initiated by Cluster Q.

“Defining long-term goals will help organise and integrate currently-scattered activities. For me, what matters is that everyone realises quantum technologies are an important domain that needs to be supported in the long term”, says Dr Anna Musiał.

If adopted, the programme would be a huge opportunity for the development of science, business and the economy.

Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz

QuantERA Strategic Conference, Kraków 2022 | Photo by Błażej Górczyński

Please note that the call for proposals at the Flemish agency FWO ends on 2 April 2024 while the call at the Czech GAČR and Swiss SNSF agencies acting as the lead agencies ends on 3 April 2024.

If a joint proposal is submitted to the Flemish FWO acting as the lead agency, an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system as soon as possible, by 9 April 2024, 11:59 p.m. at the latest.

If a joint proposal is submitted to the SNSF or GAČR acting as the lead agency, an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system as soon as possible, by 10 April 2024, 11:59 p.m. at the latest.

Once the work on an NCN proposal has started in the OSF submission system, the Polish research team will have 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and submit it to the NCN. After that, the proposal will be blocked for editing, in which case the Polish research team that has not sent its proposal to the NCN will have to draft a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system.

Proposals are now being accepted under OPUS 27, our call for researchers at all career levels, and PRELUDIUM 23, for pre-PhD researchers. The total budget of the two calls is 490 million zlotys and proposals may be submitted until mid-June.

Under the new calls, researchers can apply for grants to fund basic research projects in any scientific discipline.

Of all NCN calls, OPUS has the broadest formula: it is open to researchers at all career levels, including those who have not yet earned a PhD degree. The applicants must demonstrate a track record of at least one paper published or accepted for publication or, for research in art, at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art.

OPUS 27 grants can be used to fund projects with or without the partnership of foreign institutions, as well as those that require the use of large international research equipment. The spring iteration of the OPUS call does not include the lead agency procedure (LAP).

OPUS projects may take 12, 24, 36 or 48 months and involve post-docs and senior researchers, as well as students and PhD candidates. Funds from the project budget may be used for the purchase of research equipment, devices and software, materials and small equipment, outsourced services, business trips, visits and consultations, as well as compensation for collective investigators. Although there is no upper limit of funding available to a project, the budget must be compliant with the call terms, and the costs must be reasonable and crucial to the project.

PRELUDIUM 23 is targeted at researchers without a PhD degree. Grants can go toward funding projects to be carried out at Polish host institutions over 12, 24 or 36 months, with budgets of up to PLN 70,000, 140,000 or 210,000, respectively. The subject matter of the project may, but does not need to, be related to the subject of the doctoral dissertation.

The PRELUDIUM project team may consist of up to three members, including the PI and the mentor. The project budget may go toward funding the salary of the research team members (except the mentor), research equipment, software and devices, materials and small equipment, outsourced services, business trips, visits and consultations, as well as compensation for collective investigators and other necessary costs crucial to the project provided that they are in line with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the NCN.

More funding available

The total budget of OPUS 27 to be distributed among successful applicants is 450 million zlotys and that of PRELUDIUM 23 – 40 million.

“This is the first time in a while that the budgets are higher than in previous iterations. This is thanks to the announcement made by Minister of Science Dariusz Wieczorek that the NCN will receive an additional subsidy of 200 million zlotys before the end of this year”, said Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, Director of the National Science Centre.

The Minister of Science, Dariusz Wieczorek, announced his decision to provide the National Science Centre with additional resources to fund research projects at a press conference on 14 February. 

“This is a step in the right direction; it will allow us to fund more valuable projects and, in the long run, boost the competitive edge of Polish science in the international arena”, Prof. Jóźwiak emphasised, “I am hopeful that, thanks to these higher budgets, the success rates in OPUS 27 and PRELUDIUM 23 will also go up significantly”, he added.

Evaluation procedure and call results

OPUS 27 and PRELUDIUM 23 proposals may be submitted until Monday, 17 June, via the OSF system.

Proposals may be submitted by universities, research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, research institutes, scientific and industrial centres, research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences, scientific libraries, companies and legal entities with registered offices in Poland. Individuals who are not employed at any institution may also apply as long as they are going to be employed from the grant resources.

OPUS and PRELUDIUM proposals are evaluated by Expert Teams set up for each panel (e.g. HS1, NZ1, ST1). Merit-based evaluation consists of two stages: first, the proposals are evaluated by experts appointed to the Expert Team by the NCN Council, and then evaluated by external reviewers. Both at stage 1 and 2, the final decision is agreed on by the Expert Team as a whole, based on individual evaluations made by experts and reviewers, following a team discussion.

Call results will be published once the evaluation procedure has concluded, at the latest in December 2024.

Dr Mateusz Sikora, Head of the Dioscuri Centre at the Małopolska Centre for Biotechnology, Jagiellonian University, has developed a revolutionary method for the fast visualisation of proteins and sugars, which relies on GlycoSHIELD, an algorithm created within the framework of Polish-German scientific cooperation under the Dioscuri Programme. The paper that describes the algorithm was just published in the prestigious journal “Cell".

Sugar chains (glycans) that coat the surface of proteins in our bodies also influence how they interact with other molecules. This is why a robust understanding of glycans plays such an important role, e.g., in new drug development. Because of their mobility and variability, experimental research into sugars is very complex. Computer simulations that allow imaging of how glycans coat proteins normally require hundreds of thousands of hours on purpose-built supercomputers, which means they cannot be routinely used in the process of new drug development.

A solution to these challenges has now been proposed: GlycoSHIELD, a very efficient algorithm that takes just minutes to predict how sugars will behave on protein surfaces. It was developed within the framework of Polish-German cooperation at the Max Planck Dioscuri Centre established in 2023 at the Małopolska Centre for Biotechnology at the Jagiellonian University. The centre is headed by Dr Mateusz Sikora, who previously completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. On the German side, Dr Sikora has partnered up with a team led by Prof. Gerhard Hummer from the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt. The research project has also involved contributions from the Taiwanese Academia Sinica, the French Inserm Insitute, and the University of Bremen, Germany. The scientists have just published their method in the prestigious “Cell” journal.

Dr Sikora emphasises: “Our approach reduces resources, computing time and the necessary technical expertise. Anyone can now calculate the arrangement and dynamics of sugar molecules on proteins on their personal computer or our online app within minutes. There is no need for specialist knowledge or high-performance computers”. The software may help develop new vaccines, drugs and advanced therapies, such as, for instance, cancer immunotherapy.

More about the method developed at the Dioscuri Centre for Modelling Post-translational Modifications

Dioscuri programme

The Dioscuri Programme was launched on the initiative of the Max Planck Society with an aim to create research teams throughout Central and Eastern Europe that would be able to compete with teams at the international level.

Four calls for proposals for the establishment of Dioscuri Centres of Scientific Excellence in Poland have been announced thus far, with 8 out of 114 submitted proposals selected for funding. Scientific excellence is the only assessment criterion under the call. The exceptional programme has attracted eight young researchers to come to Poland; they have received funding to set up and develop independent research groups in the form of Dioscuri Centres in the country. To date, five Dioscuri Centres have been established at PAS institutes in Warsaw; three more are active at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków. Each Dioscuri Centre receives 1.5 million euro in funding over five years. The costs are split evenly between the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (previously: Ministry of Education and Science) and the Ministry of Education and Scientific Research of the Federal Republic of Germany, while host institutions in Poland provide the necessary research infrastructure.

The Dioscuri Programme was implemented in cooperation with the National Science Centre from 2017 onward, until it was suspended by the decision of the previous Minister of Education and Science. The NCN continues to reassert its readiness to organise the last iteration of the Dioscuri call.

Researchers from Rzeszów and Opole have just won grants under the international IMPRESS-U call. For the next two years, they will be working on ambitious research projects in cooperation with US and Ukrainian scientists. The NCN will fund their research with a total of nearly 1.5 million zlotys.

The IMPRESS-U (International Multilateral Partnerships for Resilient Education and Science System in Ukraine) call was announced in August 2023. Its objectives are to (1) support excellence in science and engineering research, education, and innovation through international collaboration and (2) promote and catalyze integration of Ukrainian researchers in the global research community.

 IMPRESS-U opens up new opportunities for cooperation between Polish and Ukrainian researchers and their colleagues in the US and, optionally, the Baltic countries: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) is the initiator of the call and its lead agency, which means it is responsible for the merit review of all international proposals, while the other partner agencies approve the results of its review and award funding to their respective research teams.

The IMPRESS-U initiative now gives Polish researchers an opportunity to actively participate in the effort of integrating Ukrainian researchers into the global research community and help rebuild the scientific ecosystem of Ukraine.

Enhancing deep neural networks

One of the first two winners of the call is a team led by Dr hab. Anna Lytova from the University of Opole, who will be working in collaboration with Dr hab Radosław Adamczak from the University of Warsaw. The team will carry out a project entitled Random Matrix Theory and its Applications in Deep Learning together with 10 other participants from the United States and Ukraine. Their US partner is Prof. Leonid Berlyand from The Pennsylvania State University, while research on the Ukrainian side will be headed by Prof. Victor Slavin from the B. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kharkiv.

Dr hab. Anna Lytova Dr hab. Anna Lytova is a professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Opole. She earned her PhD at the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and has lived and worked in Poland for the past 7 years. Her research is centred on random matrix theory, random graph theory, asymptotic geometric analysis and statistics.

“It was Prof. Berlyand who approached me with his idea of submitting a joint proposal under the IMPRESS-U call. I was familiar with his research record and his work – we had met previously at various seminars – but the IMPRESS-U project will be our first collaboration”, says Anna Lytova, “we really wanted to take advantage of this funding opportunity to support talented mathematicians from the so-called Kharkiv school of mathematics in these difficult times of war”.

Their IMPRESS-U project is dedicated to random matrix theory. Put simply, matrices are rectangular or square tables of numbers, which represent a phenomenon through different parameters, many of which are unknown. In particular, matrices are used to solve systems of equations. Random matrix theory is a subfield of mathematics, which studies the spectrum of large matrices with random entries selected from different probability distributions and with different types of symmetry. Random matrices are very useful for modelling complex systems and can be applied in various disciplines and contexts. In recent years, they have found applications in the rapidly growing field of machine learning, e.g. in deep neural network theory. Scientists now face the challenge of understanding and improving the efficacy of these network learning processes. In their project under the IMPRESS-U call, the Opole- and Warsaw-based team, in cooperation with their international partners, will analyse the spectral properties of random matrices related to neural networks with analytical and numerical methods; they will also work on developing tools to improve accuracy and reduce the complexity of training algorithms.

“Besides doing research, our project also aims to support the educational initiatives undertaken by talented young mathematicians, students and graduate students who, despite the ongoing war, continue to hold classes with the children from competitive maths clubs and teach the next generation of Ukrainian mathematicians, Dr hab. Lytova emphasises.

The NCN decided to award nearly 360,000 zlotys to the Polish part of the project.

Developing regenerative medicine

The other researcher to be awarded NCN funding under the IMPRESS-U call is Dr Olexandr Korchynskyi. He is a molecular and cell biologist, who has been working on methods of regulating stem cell differentiation and function for more than 20 years. His research record includes papers in “Nature” and “Science,” and he is currently employed as an Associate Professor at the University of Rzeszów.

Dr Olexandr Korchynskyi Korchynskyi heads a Polish team that will use the IMPRESS-U grant to fund a project entitled “High-throughput agile interfaces for cell sorting (HiTACS)”. The US partner is a team led by Dr Sergiy Minko from the University of Georgia, and, on the Ukrainian side, Prof. Yaroslav Ilnytskyy from the Institute of Condensed Phase Physics in Lviv. The budget of the Polish part of the projects is nearly 1.08 million zlotys.

Aging societies, diseases, disorders and armed conflicts pose a growing challenge to regenerative medicine. Scientists around the world are working on new methods that would allow specific therapeutic stem cells to quickly proliferate and increase our ability to reconstruct tissue deficits or grow entire organs that could be transplanted into patients. The greatest challenge in this context today is to be able to separate therapeutic cells from those that could be potentially dangerous quickly and effectively.

– Our American and Ukrainian partners have worked on stimuli-responsive biomaterials for over a decade. On the other hand, since 2020 we have worked with researchers in Ukraine to create computer-based models of biomedical processes. Owing to the IMPRESS-U program, we discovered an ample opportunity to turn our preexisting collaborations in a larger multidisciplinary research project addressing emerging regenerative medicine technologies. My team has a lot of experience in this area, so we enthusiastically extended our collaboration and jumped on board to apply for a grant under the IMPRESS-U call”, says Dr Korchynskyi.

Their international IMPRESS-U grant consortium will work on developing advanced “smart” multi-trait surfaces that could be used for high-efficiency sorting of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). The researchers will use simulation modelling and experimental methods.

“IMPRESS-U is an education and research programme all rolled into one. Since research on the Polish side will be done in Rzeszów, a town in close proximity to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, we will be able to serve as an effective hub for the educational exchange between Ukrainian and Polish youth”, stresses Dr Korchynskyi.

About the call

Proposals are still being accepted under the IMPRESS-U call. Funding is available for projects that involve research teams from Poland, Ukraine and the US, as well as, optionally, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia. The PI of the Polish team must hold at least a PhD degree and the Polish part of the project may be planned over a maximum of 24 months. In addition, projects must address the requirements of the EAGER type of special NSF proposals. The Polish partner institutions under IMPRESS-U are the National Science Centre, which has a total budget of 17 million zlotys to distribute among new projects prepared by Polish teams, and the National Agency for Academic Exchange, with a total budget of 7 million, which will be used to fund the expansion of US NSF projects already underway to include cooperation with Polish teams under the so-called International Supplements opportunity.

Foreign teams may submit their applications to the US National Academy of Sciences (US NAS) – for Ukrainian researchers, the Research Council of Lithuania (LMT), the Latvian Council of Science (LCS) and the Estonian Research Council (ETAG).

“We can now confirm we are ready to launch funding procedures for projects that were put on waiting lists in OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22, MAESTRO 15 and SONATA BIS 13”, said NCN Director Krzysztof Jóźwiak, “this will be possible once the NCN has modified its financial plan”.

In November 2023, in connection with the NCN’s efforts to have its basic research funding budget increased, the NCN Council passed a resolution that allowed for waiting lists to be drawn up in the OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22, MAESTRO 15 and SONATA BIS 13 calls. This solution paved the way for the possibility of allocating any additional resources to research projects at Polish host institutions as early as 2024.

Projects that made it onto waiting lists were highly rated by experts and deserved to be funded but could not receive a positive funding decision because there were simply not enough resources in the NCN budget at the time when the calls were concluded.

All the calls in which waiting lists could be created by expert teams have now concluded. Their results have been published on the NCN website, and applicants whose proposals were put on waiting lists have received relevant decisions with a note to that effect.

On 14 February, Minister of Science Dariusz Wieczorek announced that, in 2024, the budget of the National Science Centre would be increased by 200 million zlotys. This means that researchers working at Polish institutions will receive more resources for their research projects as early as this year. This is very good news for the research community, which has appealed for greater investment in research funding via NCN grants. The minister’s decision will allow the NCN to launch funding procedures for projects on waiting lists, but for this to be possible, the NCN first needs to modify its 2024 financial plan. We are currently waiting for the Minister of Science to approve that modification.

Once it is approved, the NCN Council will pass a series of resolutions to increase the budgets of individual calls. Subsequently, available resources will be divided between different disciplines or discipline groups in accordance with the previous NCN Council resolution on the possibility of compiling waiting lists for OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22, SONATA BIS 13 and MAESTRO 15 calls. Proposals will be awarded funding in accordance with their ranking order on the waiting list until the budget allocated by the NCN Council is exhausted and the NCN Director will issue new funding decisions for the proposals in question. All decisions will be taken, and procedures will be launched, as soon as possible.