NCN together with BiodivERsA and Belmont Forum networks is pleased to announce a new call on biodiversity and ecosystem "Scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services" targeting the following topics:

• Development and application of scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services across spatial scales of relevance to multiple types of decisions,
• Consideration of multiple dimensions of biodiversity and ecosystem services in biodiversity scenarios.

Funding is available for international research projects that involve at least three researchers from three different eligible countries.

Call timetable

1 December 2017 – deadline for pre-registration

9 March 2018 – deadline for full proposals

July 2018 – call results

One joint proposal document (in English, and following the provided template) shall be prepared by the project participants of a joint transnational proposal, and must be submitted to the Call Secretariat by the coordinator.

Countries participating in the call

Argentina, Austria, Belgium (Wallonia-Brussels Federation), Brazil (State of Sao Paulo only), Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United States of America

Applicants are invited to use the BiodivERsA Partner Search Tool, which facilitates matches between potential partners with similar ideas. It provides the opportunity to express interest either in joining a research proposal or to search for partner(s) for an existing proposal.

Call documentation

Information for Polish applicants

1. NCN eligibility criteria
2. On the full proposal stage Polish applicants must register their applications in the OSF submission system (UNISONO application). This application includes the following budget table.
3. We strongly encourage all applicants to read information on eligible costs included in the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO, p. 5-12).
4. If one international project includes partners from two different Polish Host Institutions, these institutions must apply as a consortium. Each Host Institution comprising the consortium has a separate budget, but the limit on the remuneration applies to the consortium as a whole (UNISONO, p. 8-9: item 2.1.2 a) and b)).
5. Budget of the Polish part of the research project in the OSF system should be given in PLN (1 EUR= 4,3162 PLN).
6. Projects including Polish teams may last 36 months.

Contact

Dr Marcin Liana, tel: +48 12 341 9161

Joanna Komperda, tel: +48 12 341 9138

The CHIST-ERA Network pre-announces its new call for proposals, to be published in October 2017, which will target research in the following topics:

• Object recognition and manipulation by robots: Data sharing and experiment reproducibility (ORMR)
• Big data and process modelling for smart industry (BDSI)

The call will  require  that  projects  are  submitted  by  international  consortia with  partners  from  at  least three participating countries: Austria*, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada (Québec), Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom*.

The national/regional eligibility criteria will be defined by each participating funding agency.

The anticipated deadline for pre-proposals is 11^th of January 2018. The projects will be selected in the second half of 2018.

For details please see the attached document and website.

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.

*only within the first topic of this call (ORMR)

Contact:

• Dr Jakub Gadek, tel. +48 12 341 9152
• Marlena Wosiak, tel. +48 12 341 9093

The National Science Centre has announced the 14^th edition of the OPUS and PRELUDIUM funding opportunities and the 1^st edition of the Polish-Lithuanian DAINA programme. Scholars carrying out basic research will compete for a total of € 83.4 million in funding.The new call for proposals, DAINA 1, is a joint initiative of the National Science Centre and the Research Council of Lithuania (Lietuvos mokslo taryba, LMT). Under the scheme, funding will be made available to Polish-Lithuanian research teams conducting research in all disciplines. Projects to be carried out may last 24 or 36 months, and the principal investigator of the Polish team in the project must at least hold a doctorate. The programme’s budget has been set at ca € 1.9 million.

DAINA is yet another step on the path toward taking Polish research to an international level, which is an important element of the National Science Centre’s mission, said professor Janusz Janeczek, chair of the Council of the National Science Centre. The new call will be organised along similar lines to the highly successful Polish-German BEETHOVEN call. We hope that the use of a proven formula will contribute to closer cooperation with another neighbouring country and will strengthen the potential of the Polish and Lithuanian research communities.

The PRELUDIUM 14 call is addressed to researchers beginning their career in research, who hold no doctorate. It gives doctoral candidates the opportunity to independently run a one-, two- or three-year research project of their own. This edition’s budget has been set at € 9.58 million.

The last of the newly open calls, OPUS 14, is addressed to a wide range of applicants. The scheme is open to all researchers, regardless of their experience and academic degree. The funding received may be used for establishing a research team and purchasing equipment required in the research. There is no cap on funding for individual projects. The total budget is close to € 72 million.

Proposals must be submitted via the ZSUN/OSF system (https://osf.opi.org.pl) by 15^th December 2017.

On the 6^th and 7^th September 2017 in Lubljana, a meeting took place involving representatives of funding agencies from five Central European countries: prof.  József Györkös, director of the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), prof. Klement Tockner, president of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), dr Alice Valkárová, president of the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR), dr József Pálinkás, president of the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFIH) and prof. Zbigniew Błocki, director of the National Science Centre.

The participants discussed the prospects for strengthening cooperation between the agencies in order to enable outstanding researchers to carry out top-quality research at research institutions in the region. The cooperation should result in facilitating grant opportunities and simplifying evaluation procedures.

In the future, the initiative is to involve funding institutions from other Central European countries.

  

NCN together with EU-India Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (EqUIP)  is pleased to announce a call for international research projects “Sustainability, equity, wellbeing and cultural connections”. Funders strongly encourage interdisciplinary approaches across the social sciences and humanities (SSH) to address the themes of this call.

Each project must involve at least one research team from India, eligible for funding by the participating Indian funding agencies, one of which has to be Indian Council for Social Science Research, and at least two research teams from different countries participating in the call.  Project duration may not exceed 36 months.

The overall project coordinator must submit one proposals on behalf of all the research teams in all countries via Je-S submission system by November 30^th, 2017, 16:00 (UTC + 1:00).

Applicants are invited to use the EqUIP partner search tool, which facilitates matches between potential partners with similar ideas. It provides the opportunity to express interest either in joining a research proposal or to search for partner(s) for an existing proposal.

Countries participating in the call:

Finland, France, India, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and United Kingdom

CALL TIMETABLE

• Application deadline (full proposals): November 30^th, 2017, 16:00 (UTC + 1:00)
• Call results: July 2018
• Project start: January 2019

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CALL

Information for Polish applicants:

1. On the full proposal stage Polish applicants must register their applications in the OSF submission system (UNISONO application). The application includes the following budget table: http://ncn.gov.pl/sites/default/files/pliki/UNISONO_budget_table.xlsx. Information provided in the submission system (budget, justification of basic research criterion) refers to the Polish part of the project.
2. We strongly encourage all applicants to read information on eligible costs included in the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO, s. 5-12).
3. Projects including Polish teams may last 24 or 36 months.
4. If one international project includes partners from two different Polish Host Institutions, these institutions must apply as a consortium.  Each Host Institution comprising the consortium has a separate budget, but the limit on the remuneration, referred to in paragraph 2.1.2 of the above mentioned document, applies to the consortium as a whole (please see UNISONO, p. 8-9). Please note that Polish consortia have higher limits on the remuneration.  
5. Budget of the Polish part of the research project in the OSF system should be given in PLN: 1 EUR= 4,3162 PLN.

Contact:

dr hab. Wojciech Sowa, tel. 12 341 9171, wojciech.sowa@ncn.gov.pl

dr Malwina Gębalska, tel: 0048 519 404 997, malwina.gebalska@ncn.gov.pl

The HERA Network is pleased to announce a new Joint Research Programme (JRP): Public Spaces: Culture and Integration in Europe in the area of humanities. The HERA JRP PS wants to mobilize the wide range of multi-disciplinary perspectives necessary to understanding the relationships between “public space”, culture and other phenomena, such as e.g. European integration, migration, globalisation, digitisation.

Proposals involving humanities-led research can be submitted by balanced consortia involving four or more Principal Investigators eligible to HERA JRP PS funders from four or more different countries. All research teams will be urged to include non-academic stakeholders as associate partners in their consortiums, such as: museums, NGOs, media. Each proposal can apply for research funding up to a maximum amount of 1 M€ (across all partners), should be between 24 and 36 months in duration and should commence by May 2019.

Countries participating in the call:

Austria, Belgium (Wallonia), Czech Republic, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

Applicants are invited to use the HERA Public Spaces Partner search tool which facilitates matches between potential partners with similar ideas. It provides the opportunity to express interest either in joining a research proposal or to search for partner(s) for an existing proposal.

The draft timetable for applications is:

• Outline Proposals to be submitted 24th October 2017, 14:00 Central European Summer Time
• In February 2018 shortlisted applicants will be invited to submit Full Proposals until 9 May 2018
• Call results: end of 2018
• Project start: January-May 2019

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE CALL

Information for Polish applicants:

1. On the full proposal stage Polish applicants must register their applications in the OSF submission system (UNISONO application). The application includes the following budget table: http://ncn.gov.pl/sites/default/files/pliki/UNISONO_budget_table.xlsx.
2. We strongly encourage all applicants to read information on eligible costs included in the Annex to NCN Council’s Resolution on funding granted within calls for proposals for international research projects (UNISONO, s. 5-12).
3. Projects including Polish teams may last 24 or 36 months.
4. If one international project includes partners from two different Polish Host Institutions, these institutions must apply as a consortium.  Each Host Institution comprising the consortium has a separate budget, but the limit on the remuneration, referred to in paragraph 2.1.2 of the above mentioned document, applies to the consortium as a whole (please see UNISONO, p. 8-9). Please note that Polish consortia have higher limits on the remuneration.  
5. Budget of the Polish part of the research project in the OSF system should be given in PLN: 1 EUR= 4,4232 PLN.

Contact:

dr hab. Wojciech Sowa, tel: +48 12 341 9171

Anna Kotarba, tel. 12 341 9091

On 10^th August, the National Science Centre (NCN) concluded the first edition of the UWERTURA call. This funding opportunity has attracted 24 applicants, 7 of whom will receive financing worth a total of € 133,665.

UWERTURA 1 is an opportunity addressed to researchers with a doctorate or a higher level academic qualification, who have carried out an NCN-funded research project as a principal investigator. The programme’s aim is to help the Polish research community successfully apply for European resources, and to increase their share among laureates of ERC grants. Polish researchers will be gathering indispensable international experience by visiting research teams abroad working on ERC-financed projects; subsequently, within 18 months of returning to Poland, the visiting researchers themselves will be required to prepare and submit a research proposal to ERC.

The UWERTURA call was developed in cooperation with the European Research Council and is addressed to researchers interested in applying for ERC grants, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, the director of the NCN. This arrangement was devised to enable them to enter into collaboration with and learn from those who have already received such grants. Poland is among 7 European countries taking part in this type of programme.

There were 24 researchers competing for the ERC fellowships. A sum of almost € 134,000 will be distributed among the 7 winners. The successful proposals were submitted by representatives of the AGH University of Science and Technology, University of Warsaw, Jagiellonian University, University of Gdansk, University of Wroclaw and two research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences: the Institute of Botany and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology. The researchers will work on such topics as the impact of extreme waves on the environment of the Arctic coasts or biomedical uses of quantum dots.

A ranking list of the projects recommended for funding has been published in Polish on the National Science Centre’s website.

The National Science Centre (the NCN) has concluded the first edition of the SONATINA call. Laureates of the programme will receive ca € 5.75 million, which will fund not only their research, but also their visiting fellowships in research institutions abroad. The Centre has also published the names of the first laureates of the MINIATURA funding scheme for specific single research activities.

SONATINA is an opportunity for researchers who within the previous 3 years have received their doctorate. Funding offered to the grantee under the programme includes full-time employment in a Polish research institution, realisation of their research project, and a visiting fellowship at a research centre abroad of 3 to 6 months. The programme’s first edition has seen 123 proposals, of which 36 have been approved for funding. The winning projects’ budget has totalled ca € 5.75 million.

SONATINA is a new funding scheme of ours, while at the same time it comes as a continuation of the ministerial Iuventus Plus programme, said professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the National Science Centre. Thanks to a sizeable increase in the Centre’s budget by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the success ratio of the call’s first edition reached 29 per cent, very close to the optimal 30 per cent.

The Iuventus Plus programme, taken over from the Ministry, has been incorporated in the NCN’s existing offer as an element of a coherent structure. SONATINA is a funding opportunity for those who have earned their doctorate relatively recently, and subsequently seek, on the one hand, stable employment, and on the other: investment in international cooperation. After completion of the grant, researchers may apply for funding under the SONATA scheme for more experienced doctorate holders, as well as SONATA BIS, which enables its laureates to form a research team.

44 research proposals have been submitted in the domain of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, resulting in 6 funding recommendations for projects worth over € 766,000. They include a project analysing early medieval objects related to religious worship, unearthed on Polish territories. Its principal investigator will be Paweł Szczepanik, PhD, of the Faculty of History, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and the funding of the project comes close to € 95,000.

The domain of Life Sciences has seen 31 proposals, of which 11 have been approved, securing a total budget of more than € 2.15 million. Among them is the research on the influenza A virus, carried out by doctor Elżbieta Lenartowicz of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences. The researcher will work with a budget of ca € 240,000.

The most numerous, 48-strong response has come from the representatives of Physical Sciences and Engineering. 19 proposals have been awarded funding, more than € 2.82 million in total. Among the beneficiaries is the Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences, Adam Mickiewicz University. This is where Arkadiusz Tomczyk, MA, will conduct his project on the significance of disturbances in the upper and middle troposphere for the forecasting of extreme air temperature values in Central Europe. The research has received funding of over € 105,000.

The National Science Centre has also published the first results of the MINIATURA call for single research activities, in which researchers holding a doctorate degree may secure funding of library and archival research, research travels and conferences. Unlike other NCN calls, MINIATURA, or the “small grant” programme, welcomes submissions on a continuous basis, and the review procedure is simplified. Ranking lists of the MINIATURA 1 opportunity will be thus regularly updated until the end of 2017. In the call’s first round, 8 projects received funding, ranging from € 1,437 to ca € 11,730.

Ranking lists of the projects recommended for funding under the SONATINA 1 and MINIATURA 1 schemes have been published in Polish on the National Science Centre’s website.

We would like to invite all researchers to participate in new international funding opportunities in Life Sciences.

In October 2017, BiodivERsA together with Belmont Forum plans to open a new funding opportunity on the following theme:

Scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Deadline for proposals submission: March 2018.

For more information please follow BiodivERsA webpage, Belmont Forum webpage and the appendix.

Contact:

Marcin Liana, marcin.liana@ncn.gov.pl, tel. +48 12 341 91 61

Joanna Komperda, joanna.komperda@ncn.gov.pl, tel. +48 12 341 91 38

On 26 July, the National Science Centre decided on the results of the 5^th edition of the ETIUDA funding opportunity. This year, the agency will contribute nearly € 2.4 million contribute to doctoral scholarships. 389 researchers have submitted their applications, and 97 will receive funding.

ETIUDA is a funding opportunity offering doctoral scholarships, addressed to researchers working on their dissertations. Laureates will receive a monthly salary of ca € 1,000 and will visit a foreign research centre of their choice as fellow.

In the fifth edition of the programme, we have decided to increase the scholarships by € 360 as compared with previous years, said professor Janusz Janeczek, chair of the Council of the NCN. This will enable young scholars to devote their full time to their research, and thanks to the fellowship component they will be able to work under the supervision of the best specialists in their respective fields.

It is paramount for our community to cooperate more closely with partners from abroad. The mobility and cooperation between different centres is a key element in the success of ambitious research projects, added professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the NCN. This is why we are trying to provide the new generation of researchers with the conditions that will help them develop their contact networks and navigate comfortably in an international environment.

Applicants in ETIUDA 5 have represented different research disciplines. Submissions have been sent from large and small academic centres alike. Also the profiles of research centres chosen by the applicants as hosts of their fellowship visits are vastly diverse: they range from universities and research institutes to private-owned R&D businesses.

In the domain of Life Sciences, 112 proposals have been received, whereas the funding of nearly € 695 thousand will be distributed among 27 projects. One of them is the project by Bronisława Szarzyńska-Zawadzka, MSc, of the Institute of Human  Genetics, Polish Academy of Sciences. The researcher from Poznań will investigate genetic factors in acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children. The project has been awarded over € 26,000, and the researcher will go for a scholarship at the Center for Medical Genetics Ghent.

120 proposals have been submitted in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Funding will go to 30 of them, with a total budget of almost € 719 thousand. The list of successful projects includes, for instance, the research proposed by Michał Żmuda, MA, of the University of Rzeszów, on the relation between digital games and literary tradition. The author will be fellow researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen, and the project’s budget is € 25,000.

Most proposals, as many as 157, have sent researchers representing Physical Sciences and Engineering, where the total funding of ca € 958 thousand will be shared by 40 winners. One of them is Ewelina Witkowska, MSc, of the Lodz University of Technology. The researcher, with interest in organic electronics, will investigate polymer electroluminescent diodes. Her project has been granted funding of € 26,500, and she will carry out her research at the laboratories of the Belgian company Imec Vzw.

List of awarded projects.