We are continuing with our series of meetings with NCN Award 2022 winners. On 15 and 21 December, respectively, we will hear online talks by Karolina Safarzyńska from the University of Warsaw, who specialises in complexity economics, and Michał Bogdziewicz, a forest ecologist from the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań.

“Science in the Center” is a series of meetings with scientists organized by the NCN and the Copernicus Center Foundation. The lectures are delivered online and are streamed on the You Tube channel of the Copernicus Center.

On Thursday, 15 December, Karolina Safarzyńska, winner of the NCN Award 2022 for art, humanities and social sciences will deliver a talk entitled “Complexity Economics: the Future Is Now”.

A professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Warsaw, Karolina Safarzyńska is an interdisciplinary researcher, one of very few people in Poland to do research in experimental, behavioural and complexity economics in connection with climate change. She was given an NCN Award in recognition of her innovative theoretical models for the study of limited rationality, preference diversity and social interactions on climate policies.

A week later, on Wednesday, 21 December, we will meet Michał Bogdziewicz from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Warsaw. Bogdziewicz studies forest ecology, with an emphasis on seed years, i.e. years in which trees produce a particularly large quantity of seeds, and the impact of climate change on tree reproduction. His talk is entitled: “Hunger and Abundance: Tree Reproduction as an Unstable Foundation of Food Webs”.

Both talks will start at 6 pm and the audience will be able to ask questions.

The series kicked off with conversations with NCN Award winners for 2020 and 2021. In the new round, we have already heard a lecture by Piotr Wcisło. All events are available for replay online.

The EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research (JPND) will shortly launch a new multinational call for proposals for Large scale analysis of OMICS data for drug-target finding in Neurodegenerative Diseases.

The project consortia must have a minimum of 3 eligible and independent partners requesting funding from at least 3 different countries participating in the call.

This will be a two-step call, expected to be launched in early January 2023, with a likely pre-proposal submission deadline in early March 2023. Further details will be provided at the launch of the call.

For further details, please check the JPND website.

Please note that this pre-announcement is for information purposes only. It does not create any obligation for the JPND consortium, nor for any of the participating funding organizations. The official call announcement, to be published later, shall prevail.

Contact:

dr Jadwiga Spyrka

Alicja Dyląg, tel.:

Professor Leszek Kaczmarek, member of the NCN Council in 2010-2016, has just been appointed to the Scientific Council of the European Research Council. Composed of 22 eminent scientists, the Scientific Council is the most important body of the agency.

Professor Kaczmarek is a molecular biologist affiliated at the M. Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS. He heads BRAINCITY, a Centre of Excellence dedicated to the study of neuroplasticity and brain disease, set up as an International Research Agenda of the Foundation for Polish Science. Professor Kaczmarek is also a fellow of the Polish Academy of Sciences, European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Academia Europea. In 2010-2016, he also sat on the NCN Council.

Founded in 2007 by the European Commission, the ERC is a leading European organisation established for the purpose of funding pioneering research.

Members of the ERC Scientific Council are appointed by the European Commission for a four-year term on the recommendations of an independent Identification Committee. One of the committee members is Professor Michał Karoński from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, one of the founders of the NCN  and the President of the NCN Council in 2010-2016.

The President of the Scientific Council of the ERC is Professor Maria Leptin, and Professor Andrzej Jajszczyk, the NCN Director in 2010-2015, serves as one of its three Vice-Presidents.

The new Council members will begin their term on 1 January 2023. Alongside Professor Kaczmarek, these will include: Prof. Harriet Bulkeley (Durham University), Prof. Thomas Henzinger (Institute of Science and Technology, ISTA), Prof. Luke O’Neill (Trinity College), Prof. Björn Ottersten (University of Luxembourg).

The press release, along with new member profiles, can be found on the ERC website.

At the end of January 2023, the QuantERA II Consortium will announce a Call for Proposals in Quantum Sciences and Technologies – QuantERA Call 2023.

The Call will comprise two topics:

• Quantum Phenomena and Resources
• Applied Quantum Science

Funding proposals may be submitted by international consortia composed of at least 3 research teams from 3 countries participating in the call.

In order to facilitate the process of forming research consortia, we offer applicants a Partner Search Tool available here. This tool can be used by projects looking for partners and partners looking for projects.

More details: QuantERA website.

Contact: quantera@ncn.gov.pl

On 7 December, at 6 pm, join us for an online lecture by Piotr Wcisło, the first in a new series of talks called “Science in the Centre”.

“Science in the Centre” is an initiative of the National Science Centre and the Copernicus Centre Foundation that offers live YouTube lectures by NCN Award winners. The first edition of the series was organised last year.

Piotr Wcisło is a physicist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University and winner of the NCN Award 2022 for physical sciences and engineering, as well as various NCN and ERC grants.

Tonight, he will talk about testing the limits of quantum theory. The broadcast will go live at 6 pm.

More talks, by Karolina Safarzyńska and Michał Bogdziewicz, are planned for 15 and 21 December, respectively.

Nearly 491 million zlotys in basic research funding will go to researchers already affiliated with Polish host institutions and those who are still at the stage of planning their relocation to Poland. Below, you will find the ranking lists of successful projects for OPUS 23, PRELUDIUM 21 and POLONEZ BIS 2.

The three calls together attracted 4299 proposals with a total budget of more than 3 billion zlotys. Following a two-stage review process, our experts selected 576 of these, worth nearly 491 million in total, for a success rate of 13.4%.

OPUS winners

OPUS has a very broad formula. The call is open to researchers at all career levels, with no restrictions as to scientific degree, age or research experience. The only requirement for principal investigators is to demonstrate at least one paper, already published or accepted for publication, or at least one achievement in art or art and research (for those in the creative fields). Project may last 12, 24, 36 or 48 months and may involve the use of large international research equipment or cooperation with foreign partners.

As many as 266 researchers were awarded grants under OPUS 23: the largest number of grants will go to projects in physical sciences and engineering (ST) – 103; funding was also awarded to 89 proposals in life sciences (NZ) and 74 in art, humanities and social sciences (HS). The total budget of successful proposals exceeds 401.5 million zlotys.

Winners will take up issues such as, to name but a few, environmental protection, climate change, production and new solutions for our planet.

Dr Anne-Marie Weber-Elżanowska from the University of Warsaw will analyse the problem of sustainable economic reorientation and the importance of sustainable corporate governance for EU’s climate policy. Another researcher, Dr hab. Mariusz Majdański from the Institute of Geophysics, PAS, will develop a method for using the latest seismic techniques for time-lapse imaging designed to visualise the effects of climate change in Poland and their impact on critical zones. Dr hab. Łukasz Drewniak, assisted by teams from the University of Warsaw and the Lublin University of Technology, will work on a project entitled “Coal fly ash management: the microbial degradation of unburnt carbon”. The team reports that as much as 50% of fly ash cannot be reused (in construction or other sectors), primarily because of its concentration of toxic substances. The purpose of the project is to explore the avenues for using fly ash that has undergone a process of biodegradation.

Young researchers in PRELUDIUM

Organized by the National Science Centre, the PRELUDIUM call is designed to support young researchers by giving them an opportunity to acquire research experience as principal investigators even before they get a PhD degree. Researchers are eligible for grants of 70, 140 or 210 thousand zlotys for projects of 12, 24 or 36 months, respectively. Principal investigators under PRELUDIUM may not hold a PhD degree and they do not even need to be enrolled in a PhD program. Their NCN-funded project may focus on the subject matter of a planned PhD dissertation, but this is not a strict requirement.

PRELUDIUM 21 attracted 2163 proposals, 258 of which were awarded grants: 73 in art, humanities and social sciences, 88 in life sciences and 97 in physical sciences and engineering, with a total budget of more than 41.2 million zlotys. The list of winners includes three researchers who are still enrolled in a Master’s programme.

Winners of the call will study the problems of human and machine learning, as well as changes in the brain that occur during development.

Zuzanna Laudańska from the Institute of Psychology, PAS, will look into the way infants learn to sit up in order to understand how, if at all, the process impacts their vocal production and visual attention. To this end, she will rely on eye-tracking equipment to record the eye movements of children playing with their carers, and see how their visual attention on the mouth area evolves across the period of transition to independent sitting. Another winner, Marcin Sendera, will study machine meta-learning, focusing on more effective adaptation through attunement. The researcher explains that meta-learning allows the required number of data and computations to be reduced, which can have a positive impact on the environment and democratise research into artificial intelligence. In the life sciences panel, Klaudia Misiołek from the Institute of Pharmacology, PAS, will work on a project entitled “Developmental changes in the endogenous opioid system associated with altered sensitivity to reward during adolescence”. Based on previous observations and new research, the researcher will study a population of mice to determine how the opioid system changes in the period of adolescence in order to draw broader conclusions and put forward new research hypotheses concerning its mechanisms of action.

POLONEZ BIS attracts researchers from beyond Poland

POLONEZ BIS offers yet another round of attractive grants for researchers currently working outside Poland. The call is targeted at applicants with a PhD degree or at least four years of full-time research experience, who have not lived, worked or studied in Poland for a total of more than 12 months in the three years prior to the launch date of the call. The call offers grants to cover 24-month research projects, including salaries for principal investigators and research team members, scholarships for graduate students and PhD candidates, and other necessary project expenses.

The winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 will study a wide range of problems, including those related to space research. Dr Paweł Leon Swaczyna will arrive at the Space Research Centre, PAS, to work on a project entitled “Interstellar neighbourhood of the heliosphere revealed in neutral atom and pickup ion observations”, using data from the IBEX and New Horizons missions to study the interstellar conditions in the proximity of the heliosphere. The female winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 include, for instance, Dr Anna Becker, who will work at the Institute of Slavic Studies, PAS, focusing on the new multilingual situation in Polish higher education, and Prof. Dr hab. Anna Shalimova, who will test the impact of war-induced stress on the development of cardiovascular disease at the Medical University of Gdańsk.

The second round of POLONEZ BIS attracted 153 proposals, 52 of which, with a total budget of nearly 48.2 million zlotys, qualified for funding. Polish host institutions will soon welcome 18 new researchers in art, humanities and social sciences, 13 researchers in life sciences and 21 more in physical sciences and engineering.

POLONEZ BIS is funded jointly by the National Science Centre and the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND scheme.

In 2023, the state subsidy for the NCN will amount to 1.392 billion zlotys. “This represents yet another year of stagnation in NCN funding”, comments Professor Błocki.

In 2015, the subsidy for NCN’s research-funding operations equalled 871 million zlotys. Three years later, it went up to 1.226 billion. This year, it stands at 1.392 billion and will remain the same next year. This means that between 2015 and 2018, the domestic budget of the agency grew by more than 40%, but only increased by a meagre 13% between 2018 and 2023.

The Director of the National Science Centre discussed the repercussions of this situation with the Polish Press Agency. The dispatch was released on 5 December.

“If the budget of the NCN is not increased, our success rate, that is, the proportion of applicants who win grants, will continue to fall. At 15%, it is already unacceptably low, and shows a marked decreasing trend”, Professor Błocki said.

The Director emphasised that the research policy of the state should prioritise investment in people. He pointed out that the NCN lends significant support to young researchers. “In the highly hierarchical environment of our universities, our agency allows the playing field to be levelled for a competition between young and more experienced researchers. If the best among the young don’t have the opportunities for growth that the NCN affords them, they will just leave Poland and look for greener pastures elsewhere”, he warned.

Between 2015 and 2023, young researchers won a total of more than 3.75 billion zlotys in research funding from the NCN.

In his interview with the PAP, Professor Błocki also mentioned that in Poland, too many resources in the previous years have been slated for infrastructure and direct investment subsidies, even though it is basic research that really provides the strongest impulse for innovation.

Read the full interview here.

The NCN budget was also discussed in an article published in “Forum Akademickie” by the President of the NCN Council , Professor Jacek Kuźnicki, in November. 

“When it comes to research funding, the National Science Centre may be the most transparent institution in Poland. This is evident throughout proposal review. Applicants enjoy access to information at every stage of the process; they can also consult peer reviews and panel opinions”, said Professor Zbigniew Błocki in an interview with the Polish Press Agency. The NCN Director was responding to the words of Deputy Minister Włodzimierz Bernacki, who, earlier in November, announced the introduction of new measures meant to ensure “the end-to-end transparency of call procedures at the National Science Centre”.

The Minister also announced the establishment of a special committee of appeals for  applicants who, for one reason or another, have been denied an NCN grant. Professor Błocki responded by pointing out that such a committee already exists; it is the Appeals Committee of the NCN Council, which looks into more than a hundred cases every year. “I just want to point out that the right of appeal against an unfavourable decision is not even a standard in foreign research agencies. By definition, it is a competitive procedure, where decisions are taken by experts...The selection is made based on merit”, Professor Błocki said.

The dispatch of the Polish Press Agency was released on 1 December. The interview also touched on the issues of transparency in expert teams set up to evaluate call proposals and the involvement of foreign experts in the peer review process. The changes announced by the Ministry of Science and Education were also the focus of an article by Professor Jacek Kuźnicki, the President of the NCN Council, published in “Forum Akademickie” on 25 November 2022. Among other issues, Professor Kuźnicki also addressed the plan to reveal the identity of experts who evaluate call proposals. “First, most experts and peer reviewers will refuse to take part in such procedures, dismissing them as yet another Polish anomaly. This will make it hard to find enough competent experts. Second, those who will, after all, agree to sit on such a panel, will be working under extreme pressure from applicants, with the result that the transparency called for by the Minister will turn into a lobbying campaign rather than diligent merit-based review”, he warned.

You can read the full article on the  website of “Forum Akademickie”.

The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) has announced the results of the second NAWA Chair Programme.

The second NAWA Chair Programme was addressed to universities and research institutions that carry out research in the fields of natural sciences, engineering and technology, medical and health sciences, and agricultural sciences

Under the 2023 Programme, three outstanding scientists will perform research at the Polish universities that respond to contemporary challenges to our civilisation. An important aspect of their work is the research component funded by the National Science Centre. The visiting scientists will establish project groups and actively apply for prestigious Polish and foreign research grants.

Information on call results

In the first half of January 2023, the National Science Centre will invite funding proposals for research components as part of projects funded by the NAWA under the same call. Proposals will be submitted via the OSF submission system.

Karolina Safarzyńska, Piotr Wcisło and Michał Bogdziewicz will talk about their research in the “Science at the Centre” series. The winners of the 2022 NCN Award will deliver their lectures on 7, 15 and 21 December 2022.

The „Science at the Centre” is a series of meeting with scientists launched by the National Science Centre in cooperation with the Copernicus Centre Foundation. The online lectures are delivered online and viewed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Centre. The first lectures featured winners of the 2020 and 2021 NCN Award. Karolina Safarzyńska, Piotr Wcisło and Michał Bogdziewicz, winners of this year’s NCN Award for early-stage researchers, will talk about their research in December 2022.

Piotr Wcisło, winner of the NCN Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering will discuss his research on 7 December.

Piotr Wcisło is a physicist and professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń who carried won the NCN Award for developing a new method of searching for dark matter, using optical atomic clocks and relying on high-precision laser spectroscopy to test quantum theory and look for a new physics beyond the standard model. He has served as a principal investigator under five NCN grants. In November 2022, he won a Starting Grant of the European Research Council for a project aimed at studying the structure of a hydrogen molecule with an improved accuracy of measurement.

Karolina Safarzyńska and Michała Bogdziewicza will deliver their lectures on 15 and 21 December 2022, respectively. Researchers may be asked questions during the meetings. All meetings will start at 6 p.m.. The footage will be available online.

The first “Science at the Centre” lectures were delivered by winners of the 2020 and 2021 NCN Award and viewed by over 90 000 people.

2022 NCN Award footage