We are pleased to announce that three projects involving Polish researchers have been awarded funding in the call entitled BiodivClim: Biodiversity and Climate Change. The call covered the following subjects:

• Consequences of climate change on biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people;
• Climate-biodiversity feedback processes;
• Potential of nature-based solutions for mitigating and adapting to climate change;
• Synergies and trade-offs between policies on biodiversity, climate and other relevant sectors, and the role of agents of change.

Within the call applicants have submitted 234 proposals. Over EUR 25,5 million have been granted to 21 research projects.

Polish projects awarded within the BiodivClim call:

• BaltVib: Pathogenic Vibrio bacteria in the current and future Baltic Sea waters: mitigating the problem. Polish Principal Investigator: dr Marcin Rakowski, National Marine Fisheries Research Institute. The project will involve research teams from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Germany and Sweden.
• PRINCESS: Peatland Rewetting In Nitrogen-Contaminated Environments: Synergies and trade-offs between biodiversity, climate, water quality and Society. Polish Principal Investigator: dr hab. Wiktor Henryk Kotowski, University of Warsaw. The project will involve research teams from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany and Norway.
• NAPERDIV: Nature-based perennial grain cropping as a model to safeguard functional biodiversity towards future-proof agriculture. Polish Principal Investigator: prof. dr hab. Katarzyna Hrynkiewicz, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. The project will involve research teams from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Romania and Sweden.

The implementation of research projects funded in the BiodivClim call will start in December 2020. More information and the full list of the projects recommended for funding are available on the BiodivERsA web page.

Congratulations to all the laureates!

Further to the announcement of the results of the Polish Returns 2020 programme by NAWA, the National Science Centre (NCN) announces the opening of the call for proposals to finance Research Components that are part of the projects financed by NAWA under that call. This is the third edition of the programme that enables Polish researchers working abroad to return to Poland and conduct research at Polish universities, scientific units and research centres.

Only applications recommended for funding under the Polish Returns 2020 programme and containing a Research Component may be submitted to the NCN. In the third edition of the call, a NAWA Expert Team has selected a total of thirteen research projects for funding, of which seven meet the condition.

Proposals submitted to the OSF system must be appended with a PDF version of the proposal that has obtained funding under the Polish Returns 2020 programme. A proposal must contain information consistent with the data in the proposal submitted to NAWA. Proposals for funding Research Components will be subject to an eligibility check since Research Components have been part of a merit-based evaluation performed by NAWA. Detailed information on the proposal submission procedure can be found in the call announcement.

Results of the Polish Returns 2020 call at the website of NAWA

Announcement of the call for proposals for NCN funding of Research Components

NCN contact person for proposals to fund Research Components:

Dr Aneta Pazik-Aybar

The BiodivRestore call for proposals is already open. BiodivRestore, announced by the National Science Centre in cooperation with the BiodivERsA and Water JPI networks call, is a call for international research projects in the area of conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems and their biodiversity, including a focus on aquatic systems.

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

See the call announcement

Pursuant to NCN Council Resolution no 104/2020 of 30 September 2020, the submission of NCN proposals under the CEUS-UNISONO call will be closed on 31 December 2020, 4 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE: NCN proposals processed in the ZSUN/OSF system from 30 September 2020 inclusive, may include research projects to be carried out by the Polish research teams from 2020 onwards.  If the funding decision by the NCN Director is taken in 2021, the applicants may incur pre-financing costs from their own resources before the funding agreement is executed by the NCN, the applicant and the principal investigator. Such pre-financing costs shall be deemed eligible from the date the funding decision by the NCN Director becomes final until the date the research project is completed. 

Furthermore, from the commencement of the work on the NCN proposal in ZSUN/OSF, the Polish research team shall have 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and send it to the NCN, after which date the proposal shall be disabled for editing. In this case, if the Polish research team has not sent its proposal to the NCN, a new proposal must be drafted and completed in ZSUN/OSF (whereas, for such NCN proposals, the Polish research teams may plan their research projects in the ZSUN/OSF submission system starting from 2022).

Cooperation between NCN, FWF, GAČR and ARRS aimed at funding  bilateral and trilateral research projects in all research areas carried out jointly by research teams from Poland, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic will be continued in the framework of the lead agency procedure from the beginning of 2021. More information on the new framework of cooperation will be available on the NCN website in December 2020.

As much as 660 million PLN have been slated for four calls targeted at researchers at different stages of their academic career. They will be able to apply for funding under OPUS 20 (including OPUS LAP), BEETHOVEN CLASSIC 4, SONATA 16 and PRELUDIUM BIS 2.

The first of the newly announced calls is  OPUS 20 (including OPUS LAP).  The new edition will involve a significant change, as the call will now also be open to proposals for projects carried out in the framework of LAP cooperation (LAP, Lead Agency Procedure). The call is targeted at all researchers, regardless of research seniority, planning to carry out projects without the cooperation of foreign partners, with the use of large international research equipment, or with the participation of foreign partners (including pursuant to the LAP). The Lead Agency Procedure (LAP) is a new standard used to evaluate proposals applied by the European research-funding agencies. It is meant to make it easier for international research teams to apply for funds for joint research projects and to streamline the evaluation of proposals by research-funding agencies thanks to the reliance on domestic calls harnessed for this purpose.

“The key aspect of the Lead Agency Procedure is the mutual trust between the cooperating agencies as to the quality of their proposal review”, says Professor Małgorzata Kossowska, President of the NCN Council, “This is what makes it possible for proposals that involve at least two research teams from different countries to be evaluated in a single institution, known as the lead agency. This year, this role will be taken on by the NCN”, she adds.

In OPUS 20, the LAP will rely on cooperation agreements between the NCN and the following partner institutions: FWF (the Austrian Science Fund), GAČR (the Czech Science Foundation), ARRS (the Slovenian Research Agency), DFG (the German Research Foundation), and SNSF (the Swiss National Science Foundation).

Pursuant to the cooperation agreements, the NCN, as the lead agency under OPUS 20, will perform the merit-based evaluation of OPUS LAP proposals for research projects carried out by research teams from Poland, as well as the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, and Switzerland.

If a research project is recommended for funding, the NCN will provide funds for the Polish research team, while the other partner institutions (FWF, GAČR, ARRS, DFG or SNSF) will fund the foreign research teams. OPUS 20 is also open to funding proposals for research projects (including OPUS LAP proposals) to be carried out with the participation of partners from foreign research institutions who are not planning to apply for funding at the FWF, GAČR, ARRS, DFG or SNSF in the framework of programs organized by the NCN pursuant to the lead agency procedure. In such cases, the foreign research teams involved must seek other sources of funding.

“We would like to reassure those used to the previous format of the OPUS call that international cooperation is not obligatory under the scheme, and proposals submitted together with foreign partners will not be given preferential treatment over those that do not involve such partnerships”, adds Zbigniew Błocki, the NCN Director.

The budget of the OPUS 20 call (including OPUS LAP) amounts to PLN 450 million.

The NCN and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – DFG) also keep up their cooperation and announce the BEETHOVEN CLASSIC 4 call. The scheme continues the BEETHOVEN CLASSIC 3 call, relying on a joint merit-based review of Polish-German research proposals by Expert Teams selected by the NCN and the DFG, as well as independent experts. The call will be open to Polish-German research projects in the humanities, social sciences, and art. It is worth noting that a call for proposals for Polish-German research projects in life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering will be opened at the NCN in the framework of LAP cooperation under the OPUS 20 call. The budget of the call, organized jointly with the German Research Foundation (DFG), is PLN 10 million.

We also have the pleasure to announce a new edition of the SONATA call, targeted at researchers who earned their PhD degree 2 to 7 years prior to the submission of the proposal. The purpose of the call is to support researchers at the beginning of their career to carry out innovative basic research projects using modern research facilities and/or original methodology. Applicants can plan projects that will take 12, 24, or 36 months to complete. This year, the budget of the call equals PLN 100 million.

Last but not least, the  PRELUDIUM BIS  call is targeted at institutions operating doctoral schools. The objective of the call is to support PhD student education in doctoral schools and fund research projects carried out by PhD students as part of their doctoral dissertation. The maximum funding awarded to a single project under PRELUDIUM BIS may be as much as PLN 180,000. Research projects funded under the scheme should be carried out over a period of 36 or 48 months. The call also supports international mobility, obliging PhD students to complete a 3 to 6-month foreign research fellowship funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). The budget of the call is PLN 100 million.

Proposals in all the four calls can be submitted until 4 pm on 15 December 2020 via the OSF electronic system.

Prof. Urszula Stachewicz of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Dr Wojciech Czerwiński and Dr Michał Pilipczuk, both of the University of Warsaw, were awarded in the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant call under the Horizon 2020 programme. All three are winners of the National Science Centre calls.The first of the grant recipients is Prof. Urszula Stachewicz of the AGH University of Science and Technology, who in her project Bioinspired Composites Strategies for Saving Energy will work on innovative insulation materials that will reduce daily energy consumption. The aim of the research is to develop a material that will reproduce the insulating properties known in nature. It will be based on fibrous membranes that effectively dissipate but also release heat as required. This will result, among other things, in lower energy consumption. Such solutions can be used in the building industry as insulation, in electronic devices or cabling infrastructure. For her five-year project, Urszula Stachewicz, PhD, has been granted nearly EUR 1.7 million. The research will begin early in 2021.

Professor Stachewicz has implemented four projects under NCN calls: Investigating the properties of nature-inspired polymer nanofibre networks in the context of their application to water recovery and energy generation (SONATA BIS 5), 3D image analysis of electrospun fibre scaffolds for bone tissue engineering (SONATA 8), Cell responses to electrospun polymer fibres for tissue engineering applications (OPUS 17) and New constructions of bio-inspired polymeric nanocomposites under the UWERTURA 1 call, the specific aim of which is to support scientists conducting research in Polish research institutions in their efforts to apply for European research funds and to increase their participation in the group of ERC grant winners.

Another of the winners is Wojciech Czerwiński, PhD. He is active in the fields of automatics theory, concurrency models, databases and logic in computer science. In the years 2017-2019, he carried out a SONATA-11-co-financed project titled Separation problems in automata theory. His current project, Challenging Problems in Infinite-State Systems (INFSYS), to which the ERC has allocated EUR 1.34 million, aims to address a number of important challenges concerning the information systems known as infinite-state systems. Among other things, the aim of the research is to create an algorithm which, for a given system, would determine the initial situation and the set of movements available, would answer the question of the possibility of moving to a specific end situation. In the future, the algorithm may be useful for automatic verification of programmes, and thus vetting programmes for errors.

The third Polish laureate of the ERC grant is Michał Pilipczuk, whose earlier project, Optimality in Parameterized Complexity, was also awarded under the NCN SONATA 6 call. In the project Decomposition Methods for Discrete Problems, he will examine structural and decomposition properties of the network and try to use them to create fast calculation methods to solve difficult problems. Dr Pilipczuk’s research team will be involved in the application of graph structure theorem in four areas: theory of sparse graphs, dynamic parameterized algorithms, algorithms in planar graphs, and algorithms in forbidden sub-structure graphs. The ERC has allocated almost EUR 1.4 million to the project.

Researchers from Poland were among the 436 awarded researchers from all over the world. This year, EUR 677 million was allocated to projects. The projects will be implemented in 25 countries, a majority of them in Germany (88), Great Britain (62) and the Netherlands (42). The call is addressed to independent researchers with an established track record, who are 2 to 7 years after their doctorate, and their projects may last up to 5 years. Receiving a grant in the ERC call is a great distinction, its mission being funding breakthrough and pioneering research. The only criterion for evaluating research under the call is its scientific excellence.

See the complete list of winners on the ERC website.

The CHIST-ERA Network has defined topics for the next call for proposals that will be announced in December 2020:

• Advanced Brain-Computer Interfaces for Novel Interactions
• Towards Sustainable ICT.

Researchers are encouraged to start discussing possible projects with prospective partners. The call will require that projects are submitted by international consortia with partners in at least three partcipating countries (the list of countries which have shown preliminary interest in participating in the Call is provided in the pre-announcement on the CHIST-ERA website). The national/regional eligibility criteria will be defined by each participating funding agency.

The anticipated deadline for proposals is 15^th February 2021. The projects will be selected in the second half of 2021.

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

In preparation for the Call 2020, the national and regional research funding organisations of CHIST-ERA Network invite the researchers to participate in the CHIST-ERA Conference 2020, which will be held on-line on 29-30 September and 1 October 2020.

This event creates an excellent opportunity for the scientific community to directly participate in scoping the call content, discuss with experts and exchanging views on the future of the domains with their peers.

September 29 is dedicated to the topic Advanced Brain-Computer Interfaces for Novel Interactions, September 30 explores the topic Towards Sustainable ICT promising research directions, and October 1 gathers Open Science specialists to exchange on the challenges of Research Practices and Open Research Data in the context of potential CHIST-ERA Open Science Call.

Please check the CHIST-ERA webiste for detailed information.

Contact:

• Dr Anna Wieczorek,  the Physical Sciences and Engineering Coordinator Unit, phone: 12 341 9164
• Alicja Dyląg, International Cooperation Office, phone:  12 341 9069

We are pleased to announce that in October 2020 BiodivERsA and the Water JPI will launch a joint call on the following topic: Conservation and restoration of degraded ecosystems and their biodiversity, including a focus on aquatic systems.

This call will cover the following three non-exclusive themes:

• Studying the biological and biophysical processes at stake for conservation/restoration, and their interactions
• Assessing trade-offs and synergies between targets, benefits and policies for conservation and restoration
• Knowledge for improving the effectiveness and upscaling of conservation and restoration actions

Researchers are encouraged to start discussing possible projects with prospective partners. To be eligible, research consortia will have to include participating organisations from a minimum three different countries participating in the call, including at least 2 from EU Member States or EU Associated Countries (the list of countries which have shown preliminary interest in participating in the Call is provided in the pre-announcement). The national/regional eligibility criteria will be defined by each participating funding agency.

The anticipated deadline for pre-proposals is 7^th of December 2020.

For details please see the website, where a Partner Search Tool is available.

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

Contact:

• Dr Monika Pobiega, tel. 12 341 9176
• Anna Kotarba, tel. 12 341 9091

In 2021, the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) will launch another five-year ERA-Net programme  called JPIAMR-ACTION. The programme will be supported by the European Commission and the Polish research teams participating in the research projects will be cofunded by National Science Centre. The first call for proposals,  will target projects in the area of AMR transmission and interventions. In order to refine the scope of this action, JPIAMR in collaboration with the French National Research Agency (ANR) is organising an online workshop specifically focused on this research area.

The main goals of the workshop, to take place on 3-4 September, 2020 are:

• to identify the recent progress in the research area of AMR transmission, with a specific focus on the results obtained by the projects funded by JPIAMR in 2016 and 2017 – The Call on Transmission Dynamics and the Call on Prevention and Intervention strategies to Control AMR infections.
• to identify the gaps and needs and the future challenges in the research area of AMR transmission.

The workshop will be organised in two half-day sessions entirely dedicated to scientific discussions and debates. Videos presenting the results obtained by the projects funded by JPIAMR will be available shortly before the workshop. These will include three projects involving Polish research teams:

EMerGE-NeT: Effectiveness of infection control against intra- and inter-hospital transmission of MultidruG-resistant Enterobacteriaceae – insights from a multi-level mathematical NeTwork model

ImpresU: Improving rational prescribing for urinary tract infections (UTI) in frail elderly

INART: Intervention of antimicrobial resistance transfer into the food chain

Download draft workshop agenda: Agenda JPIAMR workshop on AMR transmission, 3-4 September 2020 (pdf)

To register to the event and to ask questions to the panellists, please follow this link: Registration page JPIAMR workshop on AMR transmission, 3-4 September 2020

Contact:

• dr Monika Pobiega, tel. +48 12 341 9176
• Jolanta Palowska, tel. + 48 12 341 9139

We are pleased to announce two new winners in the MOZART international bilateral call for Polish-Austrian research projects carried out jointly with the Austrian Science Fund (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, FWF). The winners are Dr Tomasz Goliński from the University of Białystok and Prof. Dr hab. Jerzy Kochanowski from the University of Warsaw.

Ranking list

The project of Dr Tomasz Goliński, entitled Banach Poisson-Lie groups and integrable systems, will receive a total of 198,169 PLN in funding and will analyse Poisson structures and new integrable systems related to the Sato Grassmannian with the use of advanced geometry tools. Previous results in the area have revealed some interested structures and a hierarchy of integrable equations; further research will allow better understanding of the geometry and finding new connections to other known problems. The other winner, Prof. Dr hab. Jerzy Kochanowski, was awarded 906,905 PLN for the implementation of A Chink in the System. “Polonia” Companies in 1976-1994. The research will consist of five smaller projects using the tools of social, economic and cultural history to discuss the social and economic consequences of so-called “Polonia” (Polish Diaspora) companies, against the backdrop of the accelerating processes of socialist globalization, economic transformation and social stratification in the final decades of real socialism.

We would also like to remind you that the first winner was Dr hab. Karol Nartowski from the Wroclaw Medical University. You can find more about the project he will carry out under the MOZART call here.

Grants awarded under the scheme can go toward the costs of remuneration for the research team, including scholarships for under- and post-graduate students, the purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and for other costs crucial to the research project. With a total budget of 5.5 million PLN, the call was targeted at Polish research teams working with Austrian partners. To qualify as a principal investigator in a MOZART project, applicants need to hold at least a PhD degree; the project must take 24 or 36 months to complete. The merit-based evaluation of submitted proposals is based on guidelines adopted by the FWF. The terms and conditions of the call set by the FWF can be found in the documents of the “Stand-Alone Projects” programme, and, in the case of clinical trials, in “Programme Clinical Research” (KLIF).

The MOZART call was carried out pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure (“LAP”) and proposals were accepted on an ongoing basis until 21 February 2020. The results are announced within 12 months from the submission of the NCN proposal, which means that successive ranking lists will be gradually published here.