The National Science Centre is organising a third conference to promote Basic Research under the third edition of the EEA and Norway Grants. The conference will be held on 16 November, in the Krakow headquarters of the National Science Centre and will focus on Humanities and Social Sciences.
Research projects funded under the EEA and Norway Grants and carried out by the research teams and individual researchers from the Polish research centres, will be presented at the event. The conference will also include a panel discussion on Social Transformations in the Age of Polarization, moderated by Prof. Nina Witoszek from the University of Oslo.
Join us at the “EOSC Festival 2023. The National Tripartite Event Poland” during which we will discuss, inter alia, the Widening Countries’ perspective of the future of EOSC.
The event will be held on 6 and 7 November 2023 at the Headquarters of the National Science Centre in Krakow. The first day will be streamed online.
The EOSC Festival is organised by the National Science Centre as part of its mission in the European Open Science Cloud and a mandated organization (national representative) in the EOSC Association.
The main objectives of the event are to:
present the European Open Science Cloud,
enhance cooperation and dialogue between key EOSC stakeholders in Poland and in the region,
discuss the directions of EOSC strategic development,
increase EOSC’s visibility in Poland, i.e., by notifying the national academic community of the implementation of EOSC in Poland.
The Festival will be officially opened on 6 November 2023, at 11 a.m. in the Headquarters of the National Science Centre at Twardowskiego 16 in Krakow, Poland.
On 31 October, Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak was appointed as the new Director of the National Science Centre. Prof. Jóźwiak is a former NCN Council member who knows the National Science Centre very well.
Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak is a professor of pharmaceutical sciences involved in molecular pharmacology and drug chemistry. He is the Head of the Department of Biopharmacy and Chair of Chemistry at the Medical University of Lublin. Between 2018 and 2022, Prof. Jóźwiak was a member of the Scientific Council of the Maj Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow.
“I am determined to do my best to push for an increase in the NCN grant-in-aid. I believe it to be the most urgent task and hope the Ministry of Education and Science will understand that concern. Without decent quality-oriented science and education funding, we will not be able to create a modern knowledge-based economy in Poland”, says the new NCN Director.
Prof. Jóźwiak knows the National Science Centre very well. He is a former member of the NCN Council (2012-2020) and former Head of the Council’s Life Sciences Committee.
“[Prof. Jóźwiak] is one of those who were involved in the formation of the agency and understands its mission very well. I am convinced that under his leadership the NCN will use the opportunities the nearest future will bring”, says prof. Zbigniew Błocki about his successor.
Prof. Jóźwiak had to wait nearly eight months for his appointment as NCN Director although he should have started his work at the beginning of March 2023, when Prof. Błocki’s term of office ended.
An open call for NCN director was held at the turn of the year. The NCN Council accepted Prof. Jóźwiak’s candidacy in middle of February 2023. Over the next few months, everyone waited for Minister Przemysław Czarnek to officially nominate Prof. Jóźwiak as NCN Director. According to the Act on the National Science Centre, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki has acted as an interim Director.
The new Director was officially appointed on 31 October, at the headquarters of the National Science Centre. Minister Czarnek was represented by Prof. Włodzimierz Bernacki, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Education and Science.
Prof. Włodzimierz Bernacki, Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki
NCN’s operation over the past two years and condition of Polish science and research institutions after the election are discussed in episode 9 of our podcast.
Principal Investigator
:
Prof. Dr hab. Katarzyna Jednoróg
Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology PAS
Panel: HS6
Funding scheme
: OPUS 18
announced on
16 September 2019
Everybody knows that fluent reading is very important in various areas of life. However, it is still unknown why as many as 10% of children struggle with learning to read, despite having normal or above-average intelligence. These children have developmental dyslexia, i.e., a specific reading difficulty which is present in every language and does not remit with age. Researchers are still trying to understand the neurobiological mechanisms and reasons why reading can be so challenging for some children.
The purpose of our research is to verify neural noise hypothesis according to which reading difficulties are caused by disruptions in neurotransmission. According to this hypothesis, the concentration of glutamate (the main excitatory neurotransmitter) may be elevated in dyslexic individuals, leading to increased noise and instability in information processing. This, in turn, hinders the integration of information from different senses and the distinguishing of speech sounds (phonological awareness) — both vital for reading development. Our study involves assessing reading ability, phonological awareness, multisensory integration, and employing non-invasive brain imaging methods. All this to determine whether the neuronal noise hypothesis indeed effectively explains the mechanisms of reading difficulties.
Prof. Dr hab. Katarzyna Jednoróg, photo by Michał ŁepeckiUsing EEG, we measured the level of neural noise in teenagers with dyslexia and those with good reading skills. Although higher neural noise is characteristic of neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD or autism, our results show that it does not seem to be the case in dyslexia. Individuals with dyslexia, however, exhibited lower phonological awareness.
Additionally, we discovered that problems related to multisensory integration are specific for dyslexic boys. Only in boys was the multisensory integration linked to reading skills. This is probably an additional risk factor for dyslexia in boys, among whom dyslexia is more common than in girls.
Once we analyse the experimental data, we will be able to describe the connections between specific neurotransmitters, neuronal noise and cognitive abilities in typical reading development and dyslexia. This will represent a significant advancement in the field of dyslexia research and an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about the actual causes of reading difficulties in children.
Project title: Verification of the neural noise hypothesis of dyslexia
Prof. Dr hab. Katarzyna Jednoróg
Kierownik - dodatkowe informacje
MA in psychology at the Jagiellonian University. PhD in neurobiology at the Nencki Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences. Post-doctoral fellowship in France, in cooperation with Franck Ramus (École Normale Supérieure). Cooperated with Kenneth Pugh (Haskins Laboratories, USA) under the mentoring programme of the Foundation for Polish Science. For the last five years, Head of the Laboratory of Language Neurobiology at the Nencki Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences.
Episode 9 of our podcast features a conversation between our host Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz and Prof. Zbigniew Błocki in which he talks about NCN’s recent situation and condition of Polish science and research institutions after the election.
Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, Zbigniew BłockiProf. Zbigniew Błocki was the Director of the National Science Centre from March 2015 to March 2023 (two terms of office) and interim Director since March 2023
In October 2021, the Minister Przemysław Czarnek said that he would “put the National Science Centre back on its feet”. In August 2023, he promised that in autumn he would close the National Science Centre down and merge it with the National Centre for Research and Development and the Medical Research Agency.
At the same time, the NCN’s budget was frozen.
Prof. Zbigniew Błocki talks about the attempts to “reform” and “starve” the National Science Centre or rather “starve Polish science”.
However, the main part of the conversation was about the future. Prof. Błocki talked about the need to increase the NCN’s budget in the coming years, NCN development directions and new tasks that could be assumed by the NCN. When asked about a “list of tasks” for the new minister and suggestions for what should be done with recently created programmes and institutions (e.g., the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy) or institutions that have succumbed to political pressure (e.g., the National Centre for Research and Development, “NCBR”), our guest said that “[it needs to be] thoroughly reformed, the time is ripe” referring to the National Centre for Research and Development. “I have heard people saying that the National Centre for Research and Development had been working perfectly until now, but a year or year and a half ago a new team came, and the scandals started. Well, it was not really like that. People who are aware of what is happening know that the NCBR did not work well from the very beginning. We have injected tens of billions of zlotys into the so-called innovations (...) and the result is that our innovation rankings are falling”.
At the end, Prof. Błocki summed up his work at the National Science Centre. “I have been saying for quite some time that working for the National Science Centre was the greatest adventure of my life. I am saying that now because this chapter will soon be over. I am very happy that I managed to avoid the greatest threat the National Science Centre was facing [restricted independence]. However, I believe that the recent years have been wasted in terms of opportunities and challenges facing science, but the National Science Centre has survived in its present form, therefore it can still do a lot of good things for Polis science”, he concludes.
Join our webinar during which we will talk about temporary relaxation of NCN’s Open Access Policy and answer questions and queries of researchers and administrative staff.
The meeting will be held on 30 October 2023, between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., in Polish, on the ClickMeeting platform. During the webinar, we will interpret the letter published on our website on 16 October 2023. There will also be time for a Q&As session.
The meeting will be hosted by Dr Aneta Pazik-Aybar and Gabriela Czarny from our Open Science Team.
Pursuant to the ClickMeeting platform licence, up to 500 people may participate in the meeting.
The webinar is organised for information purposes only and no certificates of participation will be issued.
The academic community speaks up: “I am assuming that the new government will radically rewrite the budget for next year. I can’t even imagine it won’t start by increasing the NCN subsidy”, says Prof. Zbigniew Błocki in an interview for “Gazeta Wyborcza”.
“Gazeta Wyborcza”’s Alicja Gardulska asked academics about their post-electoral expectations for change in research and higher education.
“For the past six years, we have been kept on the breadline. The NCN call budget has stood still; the subsidies have failed to cover even the rise of inflation. And after all, the NCN funds research by the most internationally recognised and active researchers working in Poland”, Prof. Zbigniew Błocki, NCN’s acting Director, confesses in the interview.
“There is a lot of room for change in the higher education and research budget. The government needs to take a close look at what the current minister had in store. There are many expenses that can be cut down”, he adds.
Prof. Błocki hopes that the new government will increase spending on innovation and the institutions of the research environment that have been established in recent years. Hopefully, he says, we will finally see an end to political interference in science: “We can’t have a minister personally decide which projects are funded and which are not”.
In the same article, the following people also weigh in on the NCN:
Prof. Marcin Pałys, President of the Main Council of Science and Higher Education
“We need to increase funding for the National Science Centre since, because of insufficient budget resources, it is now unable to deliver on its important mission. On the other hand, we need to take a look at the National Centre for Research and Development and clear up all the doubts around it. This is an institution with a really huge budget and its credibility needs to be restored.”
Prof. Marek Konarzewski, President of the Polish Academy of Sciences
“ … we need to avert any attempts to close down the NCN; it should be untouchable. And we need to address the issues that plague the NCBiR.”
Professor Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director, also called for changes in research policy on 11 October during the 2023 NCN Award ceremony.
Science Business
After the elections, Science|Business also asked the NCN for comments: “The result is good news for the NCN and for thousands of young researchers in Poland that the NCN supports. Our agency is one of very few public (central) institutions that have resisted being brought under the heel of the government in recent years. And now we’re sure we’ll remain independent”, said Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, Representative of the NCN Director for Communication. “As soon as we know the name of the new Minister of Science and Education, the NCN will try to secure an appointment. At the moment, our key priority is to increase NCN funding, because our budget has been frozen for a few years”, she added.
A research component proposed by Prof. Ronald Borr from the Netherlands was recommended for funding by the NCN in cooperation with the National Agency for Academic Exchange under the “NAWA Chair” programme. Professor Borr will join the staff of the Medical University of Gdańsk to work on a project “Perfusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PWI), Optical Fluorescence imaging-guided surgery (FGS), Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Federated Learning (FL)”. This is the last component that will be funded under the programme.
Previously, NCN funds were awarded to Prof. Tomasz Taylor from the US and Prof. Brendan Kennedy from Australia.
The second edition of NAWA Chair was targeted at universities and research centres conducting research in life sciences, engineering, technology, medicine, health science and agriculture.
Within the framework of the programme, Polish universities will host three outstanding foreign researchers who will carry out research projects that address current civilizational challenges. Importantly, each project includes a research component funded by the National Science Centre. Visiting scholars will form project groups and actively apply for national and international grants.
On 11 October, the 2023 NCN Awards were handed out. In this episode of our podcast, we will talk about this most prestigious distinction for early-stage researchers working in Poland and research conducted by this year’s winners.
2023 NCN Award winners: Katharina Boguslawski, Łukasz Opaliński, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, photo credit: Michał Łepecki
Prof. Katharina Boguslawski, Prof. Łukasz Opaliński and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska are the winners of the eleventh edition of NCN Awards. Prof. Boguslawski is a quantum chemist working at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and member of the Polish Young Academy, PAS. Prof. Łukasz Opaliński is a molecular biologist from the University of Wrocław and Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska specialises in cultural studies, Czech studies and ethnology at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Science.
Our guests today are Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska and Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, member of the NCN Council and NCN Award jury panel.
Dr Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska from the Polish Academy of Sciences specialises in memory studies and studies of objects and cultures of the so-called “Recovered Territories”. She looks at how the process of resettling areas previously inhabited by German and German-speaking communities unfolded in post-war Poland and Czechoslovakia. She says her research is about the “entanglement of time”, or the way in which the past continues to influence the present and the future.
Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, Karolina Ćwiek-Rogalska, Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz
She talks about her research to Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz.
Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek talks about the principles guiding the jury’s selection procedure and amendment of the award regulations aiming to promote gender equality in science. The amended regulations will come into force next year.
CHIST-ERA Call 2022 winners include three international research proposals submitted in cooperation with Polish researchers. Polish teams will get a total of more than 4 million zlotys in funding to pursue projects in the field of communication and information technologies.
The CHIST-ERA network awarded grants to a total of twelve international proposals submitted by teams from as many as 22 different countries. Eight fall under the “Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SpiDDS)” track, and four under “Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI, WAI”. Three projects include Polish teams; Poland is the leader of the international consortium in one and a member in the other two.
A Polish team headed by Dr hab. Marcin Pawłowski from the International Centre for the Theory of Quantum Technologies at the University of Gdańsk will coordinate a project entitled “MoDIC, Modern Device Independent Cryptography”. The purpose is to shore up the theoretical foundations of device independent quantum cryptography for practical applications. The researchers are planning to conduct new non-classicality tests, improve security proofs and develop new experimental configurations, working in cooperation with partners from Switzerland, France and Hungary. The Polish team will receive more than 2.3 million zlotys in funding from the NCN.
Prof. Hanna Bogucka from the Faculty of Computing and Telecommunications of the Poznań University of Technology and her team will join Project PASSIONATE (“Physics-based Wireless AI Providing Scalability and Efficiency”), coordinated by Spain, in cooperation with partners from Finland, France, Luxembourg and Poland. The researchers will use machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to design wireless network architecture, integrating software-based solutions (algorithms and simulations) and equipment experiments (programmable radio devices). The budget of the Polish part of the project comes up to nearly 787 thousand zlotys.
The third Polish winner of CHIST-ERA Call 2022 is Dr hab. inż. Szymon Szott, who will head a team at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków, working on a project entitled “MLDR: A Machine Learning-Driven Radio Interface”. The researchers will employ AI and machine-learning (AI/ML) techniques to boost the efficiency of next-generation wireless networks. The goal is to build a new machine learning-driven radio interface (MLDR), without the limitations of currently available wireless techniques. The research will be conducted by an international consortium led by Spain including, alongside Poland, partners from Finland and France. The Polish team will receive a total of nearly 871 thousand zlotys in funding.
CHIST-ERA Call 2022 was open to research proposals submitted by international consortia made up of at least three teams from at least three different participating countries. The PI of the Polish team had to have at least a PhD degree. Joint proposals were evaluated by two separate international expert teams, each appointed for one of the call’s two tracks: Security and Privacy in Decentralised and Distributed Systems (SPiDDS) and Machine Learning-based Communication Systems, towards Wireless AI (WAI).
