132 new researchers will now be able to pursue single research activities thanks to over 5 million zlotys in funding awarded under the MINIATURA 8 call. Here comes the fifth ranking list for proposals submitted in June.

Experts selected 38 researchers in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, who will investigate a range of issues related to our knowledge of the past, humanity and social life. Dr Hubert Mazur from the University of the National Education Commission in Krakow will conduct a library and archive research in the Polish state archives, investigating documents from the period of 1944-1951, while Dr Olga Witczak from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań is set to focus on boredom as a modulator of creativity in the alternative uses test, a measure of divergent creative thinking also known as the Guilford Test.

In Life Sciences, grants were awarded to 55 researchers, who will be working on projects in applied life sciences and cell biology. Dr Hanna Fuchs from the Institute of Dendrology, PAS, will conduct preliminary research on the interrelationship between the age of forest-forming tree species and their seed quality. Dr Małgorzata Jeziorek from the Medical University of Wrocław will study the efficacy of the LCHF (low-carbohydrate high-fat) diet in the treatment of lipoedema. Specifically, she will look at the levels of inflammatory tissue hormones, such as adiponectin, leptin, resistin, visfatin and vaspin.

In Physical Sciences and Engineering, 39 winners were selected. Some of these will work on chemistry and production process engineering. Dr Kinga Wzgarda-Raj from the University of Łódź will look into phenazine (a chemical compound used as a synthetic pain reliever) as an important crystal engineering material for biomedical applications, while Dr inż. Mateusz Brzęczek from the Silesian University of Technology will work on developing a new method of measuring the energy potential of wind farms in any geographical location.

Research activities recommended for funding on MINIATURA 8 Ranking List No 5

Ranking List No 5 in PDF format

Funding per panel:

• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences – PLN1,154,742
• Physical Sciences and Engineering – PLN1,431,598
• Life Sciences – PLN 2,500,994

Total: PLN 5,087,334

MINIATURA 8

The objective of the MINIATURA call is to finance research activities carried out in preparation for future research projects that will be submitted to NCN calls for proposals, as well as other domestic and international calls. Under MINIATURA 8, researchers could apply for funding from PLN 5,000 to PLN 50,000 for a research activity planned over a period of up to 12 months.

The total budget of this year’s call was PLN 20 million. Funds available for research activities were divided proportionally between the months during which proposals were accepted. A project could be qualified for funding only as long as there was enough funding available for a given month.

This round of the call, which is meant to fund preliminary/ pilot studies, library and archive searches, fellowships, research visits and/ or consultations, was open to PhD holders who had earned their degree no earlier than 1 January 2012 and had never served as principal investigators in a project funded by the National Science Centre. They had to demonstrate a research record of at least one paper published or at least one research achievement or achievement in research in art. They could not have been winning applicants of an ETIUDA call for doctoral scholarships or a call for fellowships funded by the NCN, or serve as applicants, principal investigators or fellowship candidates in proposals submitted or recommended for funding under other NCN calls.

Decisions

Funding decisions for proposals submitted under MINIATURA 8 in June, will be sent out on 26 September 2024. Justifications are available in the OSF submission system, where you can also check the status of your proposal.

Decisions are delivered electronically to the ESP ePUAP address indicated in the proposal. If you have not received a decision, please make sure that the address provided in the proposal is correct. If it is not, contact the officer in charge of your proposal identified in the OSF submission system.

“Poland has what it takes to become a future leader in technology and innovation, but it must invest in research”, said Prof. Maria Leptin, President of the ERC, at a conference with NCN representatives, which took place in Warsaw on 24 September.

History shows that basic research, i.e. research fuelled by a natural thirst for knowledge, rather than any potential practical application, is the most important source of invention and innovation. We would never have fibre-optic networks, novel materials or COVID vaccines today without prior long-term investment in basic research. At a meeting in Warsaw, Prof. Maria Leptin said that one of her top goals as the President of the European Research Council is to get the ERC budget doubled under EU’s 10th Framework Programme, so that the agency can fund many more research projects than it has until now. She has cited, e.g. the official statement that the ERC Scientific Board has published earlier this year:

Panel dyskusyjny: Key role of frontiers research in addressing global challenges of modern world Leptin also emphasised that EU funding can never replace domestic funding; only domestic investment in research and a good research policy can turn a country into a real leader in technology and innovation. “Creating robust conditions for research growth cannot be the role of a single ministry, it needs to be the job of an entire government”, she stressed. She quoted the example of countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany, which have invested huge amounts in research for years, to argue that, for basic research, it often takes years before the effects can be seen. “Countries that lead the fray in research today do so only because of the investments they made in the past”, she said.

NCN before ERC

Scientists affiliated with Polish research centres have carried out a total of 87 ERC-funded grants. Most have previously worked on projects funded by the National Science Centre and report that their experience in heading an NCN-funded project has crucially contributed to their success at the ERC, allowing them to start out on their independent research paths, develop research skills and gain experience in independent research and research team management.

Professor Maria Leptin emphasised that the success rate of Polish researchers taking part in ERC calls has grown from 2 to 7% since the 7th Framework Programme.  However, that number is still well below expectations. At the conference in Warsaw, attendees discussed how it could be increased. “Without funding for basic research, we won’t be able to make a contribution to world science. At the current level of funding available to the NCN, we can’t even begin to think of new initiatives to increase the participation of our researchers in the international arena”, lamented Prof. Anetta Undas, President of the NCN Council. Her words were echoed by the president of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “Unless the NCN’s budget is increased to 2 billion zlotys and its success rates climb to 25%, we can forget about more ERC grants”, said Prof. Marek Konarzewski.

“This debate has been going on for more than 10 years now and the outcomes are still far from what we would expect”, said Prof. Justyna Olko from the University of Warsaw, former NCN Council  member (2018-2022) and winner of two ERC grants. “The main challenge is that there is no clear system-level support for excellence in Polish research policy”, she said. She also pointed out that NCN funding must be increased if we want to enable researchers to maintain their research continuity; unless the success rates in NCN calls is increased, Polish success rates in ERC calls won’t budge either.

The meeting with the President of the European Research Council, “Focus on Frontier Research with ERC”, was organised by the Polish Academy of Sciences and the ERC. The agenda of the event also included workshops for researchers interested in applying for ERC grants.

Prof. Mariola Łaguna from the Catholic University of Lublin, NCN Council member received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Polish Social Psychological Society (PSPS).

Prof. Łaguna works at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. Her research is located at the interface of personality psychology and social psychology. It concerns the motivational mechanisms guiding human behavior in various domains, such as work (including entrepreneurship), prosocial activities, and sports. In her analyses, she focuses on intentional human activity and the role of personal resources in the goal achievement process. She also investigates psychological measurement issues and is the author or co-author of psychological tests and their Polish adaptations.

Prof. Mariola Łaguna has been an NCN Council member since December 2022, heading the work of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Committee.

The PSPS Lifetime Achievement Award is a prestigious recognition of significant achievements in social psychology on an international level. It has been awarded since 2012 and has so far been bestowed upon 12 researchers, including Prof. Małgorzata Kossowska from the Jagiellonian University, President of the NCN Council between 2018 and 2020 and Prof. Mirosław Kofta, member of the first NCN Council between 2010-2012.

The NCN Council has modified the NCN panel list to better reflect the one in place at the European Research Council (ERC). The new classification will apply to most NCN calls starting in December.

The NCN Council has spent a long time discussing possible changes to the NCN panel list, especially in Life Sciences (NZ) and Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (HS), to make its structure better reflect current research realities. In its deliberations, it was guided by the need to better align the list with the one in place at the European Research Council (ERC), as well as by the postulates raised by the Polish research community.

During a meeting held on 5 September, the NCN Council passed resolution no. 83/2024, which officially modified the NCN panel list used in the proposal review process. Resolution No. 83/2024, Annex.

The total number of discipline panels remains the same, i.e. there are 26 panels: six in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; eleven in Physical Sciences and Engineering; and nine in Life Sciences. What has changed is their internal structure.

In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (HS), more precise identifiers (descriptors) were added to better describe panels, while some research areas were singled out or moved between panels to better match subpanels and individual descriptors. The previous division into six main discipline panels was maintained; more important changes were made to the descriptions of the HS3 panel, “The Study of the Human Past”, e.g. in the context of archaeological sciences, HS5 “Law and Political Science”, which will now include new technologies in law and public policies, as well as HS2 “Culture and Cultural Production” in the context of media and social communication.

NZ panels were modified to better align with the list in place at the ERC. Some panels were consolidated to reduce the unnecessary fragmentation of research areas and disciplines. Issues in neurobiology were all brought under a single panel, NZ5 “Neuroscience and Disorders of the Nervous System”, while veterinary medicine was subsumed under NZ9 “Biotechnology and Biosystems Engineering”. The number of discipline panels remains unchanged, but in seven of these, the number of subpanels was increased. These changes represent an important step toward a new vision of science that transcends the rigid boundaries between disciplines, and the application of ERC solutions will make it easier for researchers to draw up grant proposals across disciplines.

The NCN Council believes that changes in the structure of ERC panels should be continually monitored so that NCN panels can be adapted accordingly, including in the field of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. This approach will help increase the odds of success of Polish researchers in ERC calls.

The new NCN panel list will come into force starting with the new rounds of international calls,  BiodivTransform, IMPRESS-U and Weave-UNISONO, which will undergo peer review in 2025, and for domestic calls – starting with calls announced on 16 December 2024.

A short reminder of how to prepare proposals in the Weave-UNISONO call for the Polish research teams. 

1. Under the Weave-UNISONO call, if a joint proposal is submitted to the SNSF as the lead agency by 1 October 2024, an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to the SNSF, by 8 October 2024 at the latest.

2. Once the work on the NCN proposal has started in the OSF submission system, the Polish research team has 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and submit it to the NCN. After that, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case a Polish research team that has not sent its proposal to the NCN must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system which may impact the budget for research tasks performed by the Polish research teams specified in the NCN proposal (see points 3 and 4 below).

The 45-day period applies only to the period during which NCN proposals may be edited in the OSF submission system. Under Weave-UNISONO, NCN proposals must be submitted to the NCN via the OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of joint proposals to the lead agency, within 7 calendar days at the latest.

3. NCN proposals processed in the OSF submission system:

• by 30 September 2024 (inclusive), may include research projects that will be carried out by the Polish research teams from 2025 onwards. The following years will be included in the project budget, depending on the project implementation period:
  • 2025-2026 for two-year projects,
  • 2025-2026-2027 for three-year projects and
  • 2025-2026-2027-2028 for four-year projects;
• from 1 October 2024 (inclusive), may include research projects that will be carried out by the Polish research teams from 2026 onwards. The following years will be included in the project budget, depending on the project implementation period:
  • 2026-2027 for two-year projects,
  • 2026-2027-2028 for three-year projects and
  • 2026-2027-2028-2029 for four-year projects.

4. In the case of joint proposals submitted to the lead agencies covering Polish team budgets from 2025 onwards, make sure that:

• the work on NCN proposals in the OSF submission system starts before 30 September 2024 and
• NCN proposals are submitted to the NCN within 45 days of the date that the work on the proposal has started in the OSF submission system.

If the work on NCN proposals in the OSF submission system starts before 30 September 2024, with project performance scheduled beginning in 2025, and the NCN proposal is not completed and submitted within 45 days of the date the work on the proposal has started in the OSF submission system, a new proposal must be created. A new NCN proposal (created after 1 October 2024) may cover research projects with a start date in 2026. If a joint proposal has already been submitted to the lead agency for a research project involving 2025 funding, information in the NCN proposal will be inconsistent with information in the joint proposal and may result in the proposal being rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria.

5. The budget of the Polish part of the project in the joint proposal should be calculated according to the following exchange rate:

• In joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2024: 1 EUR=4.5940 PLN;
• In joint proposals, for which NCN proposals are processed and submitted via the OSF submission system from 1 January 2025 onwards: 1 EUR=4.2717 PLN;

6. NCN proposals processed in the OSF submission system in 2024, to which the exchange rate of 1 EUR=4.5940 PLN applies, must be completed and submitted via the OSF submission system by 31 December 2024, 23:59:59. Otherwise, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case the Polish research team must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system, to which the exchange rate 1 EUR=4.2717 PLN will apply. If a joint proposal has already been submitted to the lead agency, in which the budget of the Polish part of the project was calculated according to another exchange rate, information in the NCN proposal will be inconsistent with information in the joint proposal and may result in the proposal being rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria.

Proposals are now being accepted under OPUS 28+LAP/Weave and SONATA 20. The total budget of the two calls is PLN 600 million and the deadline for submission is 16 December.

OPUS is the largest grant programme at the National Science Centre that allows scientists to pursue research projects at Polish host institutions. All researchers, regardless of how far ahead they are in their careers, are eligible to apply. Just like other NCN calls, OPUS offers funding for projects from all disciplines of science.

The call is open to domestic projects but also those conducted with partners from international research institutions or with the use of large international research equipment. The September round of the call will additionally offer the LAP/Weave scheme, offering Polish researchers an opportunity to secure funds for projects conducted in partnership with teams in Austria, Belgium-Flanders, Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg, Slovenia or Switzerland, who will be applying in parallel with their own domestic funding agencies. Under the LAP arrangement, proposals are evaluated by NCN expert teams, while foreign partner agencies formally approve their evaluation results and award resources to the relevant partner teams.

OPUS projects may take 12, 24, 36 or 48 months to complete; OPUS LAP projects may last 24, 36 or 48 months, depending on the country of residence of the partner team. There is no lower or upper limit of funding available to a single OPUS project. Grants may go toward funding PI and team member salaries, scholarships, equipment, devices, software, materials and services, as well as project-related trips, visits and consultations.

The budget of OPUS 28+LAP/Weave is PLN 450 million. OPUS 28+LAP/Weave announcement.

SONATA is designed to support young researchers who have earned their PhD 2 to 7 years prior to submitting their proposal. To qualify as a PI under this round, the applicant must have earned their degree between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2022; the eligibility period can be extended to account for justified periods of sick leave or childcare. The PI’s record must include at least one paper published or accepted for publication, and in the field of art and creative arts, at least one achievement in art or art and research. SONATA projects may take 12, 24 or 36 months. The team may include additional members, such as students, PhD candidates and post-docs. A SONATA grant can only be received once.

The budget of the SONATA 20 call is PLN 150 million. SONATA 20 announcement.

Post-doc jobs – changes

The September round of NCN calls comes with important changes to project funding principles. In response to community voices, the NCN Council decided to modify the rules governing how post-doc positions are filled. Until now, such jobs could only be offered to researchers who have earned their PhD up to 7 years prior (a period that could be extended to account for documented career breaks); this period has now been increased to 12 years. In addition, individuals who had the project PI as their thesis advisor or assistant advisor will no longer be barred from entering the competition for the job, provided they meet all other eligibility requirements.

Proposal review and results

Proposals submitted under OPUS 28+LAP/Weave and SONATA 20 will be evaluated in a quality-focused process of two-stage merit-based peer review.

At stage 1, proposals are assessed independently by at least two expert team members, appointed by the NCN Council expressly for that purpose. The final score is agreed on collectively during the team’s first panel session. Proposals passed on to stage 2 of peer review are then evaluated individually by at least two reviewers, i.e. researchers specialising in the relevant field. The final score for each proposal at stage 2, once again, is decided by the team of experts as a whole during a second panel meeting, taking into account both individual peer reviews. The team then draws up a ranking, including proposals recommended for funding.

OPUS 28 and SONATA 20 results will be announced up to 6 months after the proposal submission deadline, i.e. by June 2025. Results for OPUS LAP projects will be announced successively as partner agencies formally approve review results, by November 2025 at the latest.

The National Science Centre (NCN), in collaboration with the European Biodiversity Partnership (Biodiversa+), has launched a new call for international research projects on biodiversity and transformative change (BiodivTransform and Transformative Change).

Projects must focus on comprehending the compromises and links between the worldwide crises of biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution. The call embedded in the “Supporting societal transformation for the sustainable use and management of biodiversity” programme aims to comprehend transformation process that may halt and reverse biodiversity decline. 

Funding may be requested by international consortia comprising at least 3 research teams from at least 3 countries participating in the call. The principal investigator of the Polish team must be at least a PhD holder.

Countries participating in the call: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey and Faroe Islands.

Submission deadline for pre-proposals is 8 November 2024, 3 p.m. and for full-proposals, 11 April 2025, 3 p.m. The principal investigator of the Polish research team is required to draft an NCN proposal for the Polish part of the project in the OSF submission system.

The call results will be published at the end of September 2025.

Please, read the call text and call documents on the website of the Biodiversa+ Partnership and on the NCN website.

“The draft (state) budget is clearly inconsistent with public statements that the NCN funding must be increased,” the NCN Council noted in its Resolution of 5 September. The Council members emphasize that consistent increase in NCN funding is indispensable to ensure stable development of research in Poland.

According to the draft Budget Act 2025 adopted by the Council of Ministers on 28 August 2024, the NCN will be awarded PLN 1.648 billion for its operations next year which is almost the same as its current funding. This year, with the additional PLN 200 million awarded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in spring, the NCN was awarded PLN 1.643 billing.

“The draft budget is clearly inconsistent with public statements that the NCN funding must be increased,” the NCN Council members provided in their Resolution of 5 September. 

Therefore, they have called for “modification of the state budget and increase in NCN funding for research by another PLN 300 million and by PLN 2 million for NCN staff salaries from 2025 onwards,” and provided that “this should stabilize our financial situation and enable support for the best quality research in Poland.”

It was also provided that if the NCN funding was not adequately increased, the “NCN Council, following consultation with the NCN Director, might consider suspension of MINIATURA and SONATINA calls and discontinuance of the next POLONEZ call co-funded by the European Commission. Furthermore, the NCN Council might consider reduction of the number of OPUS calls to one a year and MAESTRO calls to one every two years.”

In its Resolution, the Council also pointed out that salary of the NCN staff members is not commensurate with their competences and market situation. It was emphasised that “the NCN employs highly qualified staff, and many jobs require a PhD. It is difficult to recruit new employees and retain existing ones with the current average salary at the NCN being lower than the Krakow average by 25%.”

Please note that our webinars on Open Access Policy and Data Management Plans will be held on different dates:

• Webinar of 17 September 2024 will be held on 3 October 2024 and
• Webinar of 18 September 2024 will be held on 4 October 2024. 

The webinars will be held in English and their times will remain the same.

In addition, on 2 October 2024, between 10 a.m. and noon, a webinar on Open Access Policy will be held in Polish.

We are sorry for any inconveniences this change could bring about. The new dates will allow us to better tailor the webinars to the current state of the art and circumstances, hence ensuring better OA and Data Management support.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact our Open Access Team

Show number

Webinar links will be provided two weeks in advance on our website (https://ncn.gov.pl/) and in the training calendar.

Dr Piotr Alexandrowicz, a legal historian at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and Dr Łukasz Bola from the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences have joined the ranks of ERC Starting Grant winners. They are also involved in NCN-funded projects.

ERC Starting Grants are available for projects of up to 5 years by post-docs who earned their PhD 2-7 years before the call. They are awarded to research projects that are risky but potentially groundbreaking.

Brain plasticity in the blind Dr Łukasz Bola

Dr Łukasz Bola from the Institute of Psychology, PAS, won this year’s ERC grant for a project entitled BLINDBRAIN, focused on brain plasticity in people who are blind from birth. “A large part of the human brain is genetically hardwired to perform tasks related to vision. In my research, I aim to determine what the same areas do in people who are blind from birth and thus do not use their visual cortex in the same way as those with intact vision. This helps me understand how the human brain adapts to new challenges”, the researcher explains.

In recent years, neuroimaging studies on blind subjects have shown that the visual areas of their brain are activated in response to linguistic stimuli, such as words and sentences. The new ERC grant winner seeks to discover the mechanisms behind this activation. “When a blind person hears the word ‘apple’, for example, does their visual cortex produce a relatively simple, spatial representation of a small and round object? If so, this would suggest that these brain areas do retain some of their typical functions, such as the ability to assess object shape and size, even in the blind. But another possible scenario is that the activation we are seeing in these brain areas has to do with representations of more abstract knowledge, such as the fact that apples do not grow in Antarctica or that the word is a noun. This would be an indication that in the blind, visual areas may be responsible for completely different tasks than in people with intact vision. This would revolutionise our understanding of the plasticity of the human brain”, the scientist says.

Dr Bola has authored several dozen publications in leading international journals and completed research fellowships at the University of Glasgow and Harvard University.

Studying paratexts

Dr Piotr Alexandrowicz Dr Piotr Alexandrowicz won ERC funding for a project entitled PetrIUS: “Petryfikacja ius commune poprzez drukowane parateksty” [The petrification of ius commune through printed paratexts]. The goal of the project is to examine the history and function of printed marginalia in the most important old legal prints. Collections of Roman and canonical law were published in print in a format that imitated the format of manuscripts: the normative text was placed in the centre of the page, while the margins featured glosses, explanations, legal cases or summaries. These “paratexts” in the margins of printed legal books have not yet been thoroughly analysed. Their analysis can bring important insights into the relationship between legal scholars and printers, as well as about the application of the law, legal interpretation and legal education in the early modern period. These paratexts can also be analysed as tools of legal communication. “We are planning to rely on natural language processing tools, for instance, to quickly and effectively compare thousands of paratexts, track their evolution and look for references to them in contemporaneous legal literature”, the researcher explains.

Piotr Alexandrowicz works at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He has published papers on the reception of Roman law in medieval canonical law, early modern comparative law and the legal summaries in the Decretals of Gregory IX.

Previous NCN experience

Both researchers have previously won multiple awards and distinctions. Dr Piotr Alexandrowicz has worked as a PI under three NCN projects. “These projects helped me take the bold step into the international community of legal historians, establish useful contacts and effectively disseminate the results of my research. It is thanks to the NCN that I could and still can continue my post-doctoral research. Since 2020, I have been employed in projects full-time; I have no idea what or where I would be doing if it wasn’t for the NCN”, says Alexandrowicz.

Thanks to the support he got from the National Science Centre and the National Agency for Academic Exchange, Dr Łukasz Bola was able to return to Poland after a stint at Harvard University. He has completed three NCN projects. In his own words, prior experience in domestic calls proved “incredibly helpful” when applying for the ERC grant. “An original research idea is the most important, but so is the credibility of the applicant”, he says, and adds that institutional support is also something that matters. He lists examples such as mentoring initiatives offered by the NCPs of EU Research Programs, as well as mock panels and consultations with experts organised by the Scientific Excellence Office at the PAS.