On Thursday, 25th July, Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk, Director of the National Science Centre met with the President of the Max Planck Society, Prof. Peter Gruss. The meeting, which took place in Warsaw, was arranged by the Foundation for Polish Science. Present at the meeting were also Prof. Maciej Żylicz, the President of the foundation, Prof. Krzysztof Kurzydłowski, Director of the National Centre for Research and Development, Prof. Robert Hołyst, Director of the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Prof. Jacek Kuźnicki, Director of the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Prof. Tomasz Dietl from the University of Wrocław and the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, and Prof. Leszek Roszkowski from the National Centre for Nuclear Research.
The chief topic of the meeting was cooperation between Germany and Poland in terms of research − the use of financial resources in the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme being one aspect of this. The focus of the talks were teaming and twinning initiatives in which researchers from both countries are to participate. They sought adequate ways of increasing the competitiveness of Polish research as well as improving the existing model of research funding. Prof. Guss talked about the experience of the Max Planck Society which runs 82 institutes conducting some of the world’s highest-level research. Employees of these institutes have accumulated a total of 32 Nobel Prizes and are ranked third in the world for publications in Nature (after Harvard and Stanford).