At the end of January 2023, the QuantERA II Consortium will announce a Call for Proposals in Quantum Sciences and Technologies – QuantERA Call 2023.
The Call will comprise two topics:
Quantum Phenomena and Resources
Applied Quantum Science
Funding proposals may be submitted by international consortia composed of at least 3 research teams from 3 countries participating in the call.
In order to facilitate the process of forming research consortia, we offer applicants a Partner Search Tool available here. This tool can be used by projects looking for partners and partners looking for projects.
On 7 December, at 6 pm, join us for an online lecture by Piotr Wcisło, the first in a new series of talks called “Science in the Centre”.
“Science in the Centre” is an initiative of the National Science Centre and the Copernicus Centre Foundation that offers live YouTube lectures by NCN Award winners. The first edition of the series was organised last year.
Piotr Wcisło is a physicist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University and winner of the NCN Award 2022 for physical sciences and engineering, as well as various NCN and ERC grants.
Tonight, he will talk about testing the limits of quantum theory. The broadcast will go live at 6 pm.
More talks, by Karolina Safarzyńska and Michał Bogdziewicz, are planned for 15 and 21 December, respectively.
Nearly 491 million zlotys in basic research funding will go to researchers already affiliated with Polish host institutions and those who are still at the stage of planning their relocation to Poland. Below, you will find the ranking lists of successful projects for OPUS 23, PRELUDIUM 21 and POLONEZ BIS 2.
The three calls together attracted 4299 proposals with a total budget of more than 3 billion zlotys. Following a two-stage review process, our experts selected 576 of these, worth nearly 491 million in total, for a success rate of 13.4%.
OPUS winners
OPUS has a very broad formula. The call is open to researchers at all career levels, with no restrictions as to scientific degree, age or research experience. The only requirement for principal investigators is to demonstrate at least one paper, already published or accepted for publication, or at least one achievement in art or art and research (for those in the creative fields). Project may last 12, 24, 36 or 48 months and may involve the use of large international research equipment or cooperation with foreign partners.
As many as 266 researchers were awarded grants under OPUS 23: the largest number of grants will go to projects in physical sciences and engineering (ST) – 103; funding was also awarded to 89 proposals in life sciences (NZ) and 74 in art, humanities and social sciences (HS). The total budget of successful proposals exceeds 401.5 million zlotys.
Winners will take up issues such as, to name but a few, environmental protection, climate change, production and new solutions for our planet.
Dr Anne-Marie Weber-Elżanowska from the University of Warsaw will analyse the problem of sustainable economic reorientation and the importance of sustainable corporate governance for EU’s climate policy. Another researcher, Dr hab. Mariusz Majdański from the Institute of Geophysics, PAS, will develop a method for using the latest seismic techniques for time-lapse imaging designed to visualise the effects of climate change in Poland and their impact on critical zones. Dr hab. Łukasz Drewniak, assisted by teams from the University of Warsaw and the Lublin University of Technology, will work on a project entitled “Coal fly ash management: the microbial degradation of unburnt carbon”. The team reports that as much as 50% of fly ash cannot be reused (in construction or other sectors), primarily because of its concentration of toxic substances. The purpose of the project is to explore the avenues for using fly ash that has undergone a process of biodegradation.
Young researchers in PRELUDIUM
Organized by the National Science Centre, the PRELUDIUM call is designed to support young researchers by giving them an opportunity to acquire research experience as principal investigators even before they get a PhD degree. Researchers are eligible for grants of 70, 140 or 210 thousand zlotys for projects of 12, 24 or 36 months, respectively. Principal investigators under PRELUDIUM may not hold a PhD degree and they do not even need to be enrolled in a PhD program. Their NCN-funded project may focus on the subject matter of a planned PhD dissertation, but this is not a strict requirement.
PRELUDIUM 21 attracted 2163 proposals, 258 of which were awarded grants: 73 in art, humanities and social sciences, 88 in life sciences and 97 in physical sciences and engineering, with a total budget of more than 41.2 million zlotys. The list of winners includes three researchers who are still enrolled in a Master’s programme.
Winners of the call will study the problems of human and machine learning, as well as changes in the brain that occur during development.
Zuzanna Laudańska from the Institute of Psychology, PAS, will look into the way infants learn to sit up in order to understand how, if at all, the process impacts their vocal production and visual attention. To this end, she will rely on eye-tracking equipment to record the eye movements of children playing with their carers, and see how their visual attention on the mouth area evolves across the period of transition to independent sitting. Another winner, Marcin Sendera, will study machine meta-learning, focusing on more effective adaptation through attunement. The researcher explains that meta-learning allows the required number of data and computations to be reduced, which can have a positive impact on the environment and democratise research into artificial intelligence. In the life sciences panel, Klaudia Misiołek from the Institute of Pharmacology, PAS, will work on a project entitled “Developmental changes in the endogenous opioid system associated with altered sensitivity to reward during adolescence”. Based on previous observations and new research, the researcher will study a population of mice to determine how the opioid system changes in the period of adolescence in order to draw broader conclusions and put forward new research hypotheses concerning its mechanisms of action.
POLONEZ BIS attracts researchers from beyond Poland
POLONEZ BIS offers yet another round of attractive grants for researchers currently working outside Poland. The call is targeted at applicants with a PhD degree or at least four years of full-time research experience, who have not lived, worked or studied in Poland for a total of more than 12 months in the three years prior to the launch date of the call. The call offers grants to cover 24-month research projects, including salaries for principal investigators and research team members, scholarships for graduate students and PhD candidates, and other necessary project expenses.
The winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 will study a wide range of problems, including those related to space research. Dr Paweł Leon Swaczyna will arrive at the Space Research Centre, PAS, to work on a project entitled “Interstellar neighbourhood of the heliosphere revealed in neutral atom and pickup ion observations”, using data from the IBEX and New Horizons missions to study the interstellar conditions in the proximity of the heliosphere. The female winners of POLONEZ BIS 2 include, for instance, Dr Anna Becker, who will work at the Institute of Slavic Studies, PAS, focusing on the new multilingual situation in Polish higher education, and Prof. Dr hab. Anna Shalimova, who will test the impact of war-induced stress on the development of cardiovascular disease at the Medical University of Gdańsk.
The second round of POLONEZ BIS attracted 153 proposals, 52 of which, with a total budget of nearly 48.2 million zlotys, qualified for funding. Polish host institutions will soon welcome 18 new researchers in art, humanities and social sciences, 13 researchers in life sciences and 21 more in physical sciences and engineering.
POLONEZ BIS is funded jointly by the National Science Centre and the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND scheme.
In 2023, the state subsidy for the NCN will amount to 1.392 billion zlotys. “This represents yet another year of stagnation in NCN funding”, comments Professor Błocki.
In 2015, the subsidy for NCN’s research-funding operations equalled 871 million zlotys. Three years later, it went up to 1.226 billion. This year, it stands at 1.392 billion and will remain the same next year. This means that between 2015 and 2018, the domestic budget of the agency grew by more than 40%, but only increased by a meagre 13% between 2018 and 2023.
The Director of the National Science Centre discussed the repercussions of this situation with the Polish Press Agency. The dispatch was released on 5 December.
“If the budget of the NCN is not increased, our success rate, that is, the proportion of applicants who win grants, will continue to fall. At 15%, it is already unacceptably low, and shows a marked decreasing trend”, Professor Błocki said.
The Director emphasised that the research policy of the state should prioritise investment in people. He pointed out that the NCN lends significant support to young researchers. “In the highly hierarchical environment of our universities, our agency allows the playing field to be levelled for a competition between young and more experienced researchers. If the best among the young don’t have the opportunities for growth that the NCN affords them, they will just leave Poland and look for greener pastures elsewhere”, he warned.
In his interview with the PAP, Professor Błocki also mentioned that in Poland, too many resources in the previous years have been slated for infrastructure and direct investment subsidies, even though it is basic research that really provides the strongest impulse for innovation.
The NCN budget was also discussed in an article published in “Forum Akademickie” by the President of the NCN Council , Professor Jacek Kuźnicki, in November.
“When it comes to research funding, the National Science Centre may be the most transparent institution in Poland. This is evident throughout proposal review. Applicants enjoy access to information at every stage of the process; they can also consult peer reviews and panel opinions”, said Professor Zbigniew Błocki in an interview with the Polish Press Agency. The NCN Director was responding to the words of Deputy Minister Włodzimierz Bernacki, who, earlier in November, announced the introduction of new measures meant to ensure “the end-to-end transparency of call procedures at the National Science Centre”.
The Minister also announced the establishment of a special committee of appeals for applicants who, for one reason or another, have been denied an NCN grant. Professor Błocki responded by pointing out that such a committee already exists; it is the Appeals Committee of the NCN Council, which looks into more than a hundred cases every year. “I just want to point out that the right of appeal against an unfavourable decision is not even a standard in foreign research agencies. By definition, it is a competitive procedure, where decisions are taken by experts...The selection is made based on merit”, Professor Błocki said.
The dispatch of the Polish Press Agency was released on 1 December. The interview also touched on the issues of transparency in expert teams set up to evaluate call proposals and the involvement of foreign experts in the peer review process. The changes announced by the Ministry of Science and Education were also the focus of an article by Professor Jacek Kuźnicki, the President of the NCN Council, published in “Forum Akademickie” on 25 November 2022. Among other issues, Professor Kuźnicki also addressed the plan to reveal the identity of experts who evaluate call proposals. “First, most experts and peer reviewers will refuse to take part in such procedures, dismissing them as yet another Polish anomaly. This will make it hard to find enough competent experts. Second, those who will, after all, agree to sit on such a panel, will be working under extreme pressure from applicants, with the result that the transparency called for by the Minister will turn into a lobbying campaign rather than diligent merit-based review”, he warned.
The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) has announced the results of the second NAWA Chair Programme.
The second NAWA Chair Programme was addressed to universities and research institutions that carry out research in the fields of natural sciences, engineering and technology, medical and health sciences, and agricultural sciences
Under the 2023 Programme, three outstanding scientists will perform research at the Polish universities that respond to contemporary challenges to our civilisation. An important aspect of their work is the research component funded by the National Science Centre. The visiting scientists will establish project groups and actively apply for prestigious Polish and foreign research grants.
In the first half of January 2023, the National Science Centre will invite funding proposals for research components as part of projects funded by the NAWA under the same call. Proposals will be submitted via the OSF submission system.
Karolina Safarzyńska, Piotr Wcisło and Michał Bogdziewicz will talk about their research in the “Science at the Centre” series. The winners of the 2022 NCN Award will deliver their lectures on 7, 15 and 21 December 2022.
The „Science at the Centre” is a series of meeting with scientists launched by the National Science Centre in cooperation with the Copernicus Centre Foundation. The online lectures are delivered online and viewed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Centre. The first lectures featured winners of the 2020 and 2021 NCN Award. Karolina Safarzyńska, Piotr Wcisło and Michał Bogdziewicz, winners of this year’s NCN Award for early-stage researchers, will talk about their research in December 2022.
Piotr Wcisło, winner of the NCN Award in Physical Sciences and Engineering will discuss his research on 7 December.
Piotr Wcisło is a physicist and professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń who carried won the NCN Award for developing a new method of searching for dark matter, using optical atomic clocks and relying on high-precision laser spectroscopy to test quantum theory and look for a new physics beyond the standard model. He has served as a principal investigator under five NCN grants. In November 2022, he won a Starting Grant of the European Research Council for a project aimed at studying the structure of a hydrogen molecule with an improved accuracy of measurement.
Karolina Safarzyńska and Michała Bogdziewicza will deliver their lectures on 15 and 21 December 2022, respectively. Researchers may be asked questions during the meetings. All meetings will start at 6 p.m.. The footage will be available online.
Polish research team to carry out an international research project on antibiotic resistance with nearly 1 million PLN awarded for that purpose.
A research team managed by Prof. Dr Hab. Zuzanna Drulis-Kawa from the University of Wrocław was awarded in the 14th JPIAMR call: Disrupting drug Resistance Using Innovative Design (DRUID). Polish researchers will coordinate research tasks in collaboration with research teams from Belgium, France, Germany and Israel. In the project: Design and implementation of effective cOmbination of Phages and Antibiotics for improved TheRApy protocols against KLEbsiella pneumoniae, they will develop a method for treating patients infected with Klebsiella pneumoniae (considered a new priority pathogen, WHO priority 1).
The KLEOPATRA consortium will apply a ‘One Health’ approach to support research on antimicrobial therapy by way of improving the efficiency, distinctiveness and methods of delivering, combining or repurposing drugs or pesticides to treat bacterial or fungal infections. As part of the project, research teams will analyse the most common strains of K. pneumoniae in human and animal reservoirs and environmental ecosystems.
14th JPIAMR call
Thirteen projects involving 72 partners from 15 countries were recommended for funding in the 14th international JPIAMR call: Disrupting drug Resistance Using Innovative Design (DRUID). The total amount of 15.4 mln EUR will be awarded for that purpose.
For more details on the call, please visit the website of JPIAMR
Following the decision of three applicants not to carry out their projects funded under POLONEZ BIS 1 Call, the National Science Centre launched the procedure to fund proposals placed on the waiting lists. The funding decision was issued to two projects representing the domain of Physical Sciences and Engineering and to one project representing Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Dr. Laura Florentino Madiedo will work at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology on upgrading of H2 production by bio-oil steam reforming through the development of catalyst based on rhenium. Dr. Alexander Serzhikovich Ayriyan will carry out the project entitled "Bayesian analysis of the equation of state of dense nuclear matter" at the University of Wrocław. The third of the shortlisted projects will be based at the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw. Its Principal Investigator, Dr Mari Yamasaki, will focus on the perception of underwater spaces by ancient communities living along the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.
The waiting lists under the POLONEZ BIS 1 Call were approved by the Expert Teams and include proposals which were awarded at least 70 points, but fell outside the limit funds allocated by the Council for research projects within specific groups of disciplines. The Centre refused to grant funds to implement the proposals placed on the waiting lists, with a reservation that a project placed on the waiting list may receive funding if another applicant resigns.
The European Research Council has just published the winners of Starting Grants 2022. Four Poland-based researchers, who also head NCN-funded projects, will be able to start out on their research.
The winners of this round of Starting Grants include: Dr. hab Katharina Boguslawski and Dr. hab. Piotr Wcisło, from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Dr inż. Rafał Kucharski from the Jagiellonian University and Dr Adam Kłosin from the Marceli Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, PAS. Grants were awarded to several Polish scientists working abroad. In total, the ERC will fund 408 projects.
The NCN Award and the StG in one year
Katharina Boguslawski and Piotr Wcisło both work at the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science of the Nicolaus Copernicus University. Piotr Wcisło studies the simplest atomic and molecular systems, whose structure can be derived from the fundamental laws of quantum theory, and uses cutting-edge laser technologies to measure their properties with a high degree of precision. In October 2022, he won the NCN Award, the most prestigious distinction given out to young researchers in Poland, in recognition of his use of high-precision laser spectroscopy to test quantum theory and look for a new physics beyond the standard model.
The ERC now decided to fund his project, which aims to investigate the structure of a hydrogen molecule with a degree of precision thus far unheard of. Entitled “New Experimental Methods for Trapping Cold Molecular Hydrogen”, the project will be funded with 1.9 million euro over a period of 5 years. Molecular hydrogen is a very attractive object for study in fundamental physics, because it is the simplest molecule to be found anywhere in nature: it consists of just two protons and two electrons. Its properties can be very accurately calculated from quantum theory laws, but the molecule is difficult to measure experimentally on account of its very weak interactions with electromagnetic fields. “Nobody in the community is even talking of trapping molecular hydrogen. What our proposal shows is not only that there are no fundamental physical obstacles to doing so, but that we already know how to do it with the use of instruments such as, for instance, powerful lasers and superconducting coils”, the winner says.
Wcisło has served as a principal investigator in five NCN grants, some of which are still in progress. “The research group I have set up largely relies on NCN funding. If it wasn’t for the NCN, I would never be a researcher in Poland”, he says. He has won multiple awards and distinctions, completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, USA and a Fulbright fellowship at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Revolutionary computing models
Katharina Boguslawski is a quantum chemist, whose research combines chemistry, physics, mathematics and applied computer science. She focuses on developing innovative computing methods that will allow us to model the properties of large chemical molecules without the need for experiments. The ERC awarded her with a grant of more than 1.2 million euro for a project entitled “Devising Reliable Electronic Structure Schemes through Eclectic Design”. Boguslawski sets out to revolutionise the methodology of creating new materials with enhanced properties without increasing simulation computing costs. “I want to overhaul the computational paradigms that are currently employed in organic electronics to design more efficient photovoltaics, for instance”, she says. Some of her findings may find industrial applications. The project also aims to develop a black box computing tool, which can be used to model materials with the use of quantum chemistry.
Prof. Boguslawski graduated from her MSc and PhD programmes at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, and went on to complete postdoctoral fellowships at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and McMaster University in Canada. She has won many prestigious awards. The research that laid the groundwork for her ERC proposal took ten years. Boguslawski is also a principal investigator under NCN’s SONATA grant. “I proposed new mathematical models for the study of heavy elements, e.g. compounds found in radioactive waste from nuclear power plants”, the scientist explains and adds that carrying out an NCN grant was “the first step on her way to the ERC”. “That was my first experience as a principal investigator and research team leader. Having experience of this kind is very important for the ERC.”
Urban games with AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is gradually outsmarting us in a variety of fields. It can already beat us at chess, or strategic and action games, and it has recently won a painting competition. AI enjoys an advantage because it has access to real-time data and computations that allow it to take faster and better decisions. Advanced algorithms are already used in education, medicine, defence, agriculture and building design. Rafał Kucharski will now try to determine what impact AI will have on urban mobility. Based at the Jagiellonian University, the transportation and machine learning expert won an ERC StG for his project “Playing Urban Mobility Games with Intelligent Machines. Framework to Discover and Mitigate Human-machine Conflicts”. “How cities work, where traffic jams form, which tram and bus lines are more crowded – all these depend on human interactions and decisions, such as when we leave the house, which route we take and by which means of transportation we travel. If these decisions are taken by AI machines or robots instead, they are likely to get an edge over us”, the scientist says. It may turn out that AI-equipped car owners will spend much less time stuck in traffic, while those without this technology will face greater costs, as scarce resources are used up by artificial intelligence. “In my project, I want to test whether this is indeed inevitable, explore how we can co-exist with machines and find a way to prevent negative scenarios”, Kucharski adds. The ERC awarded him 1.49 million euro in funding. The project will take five years to complete.
Traffic, image Marcin Wierzchowski
Rafał Kucharski took an interest in transportation when studying and working at the Krakow University of Technology, “La Sapienza” University of Rome, KIT Karlsruhe, the Technical University of Delft and various tech companies. He has designed traffic prediction algorithms, which have already been used in places such as Beijing, Dusseldorf, Abu-Dhabi and Turin, as well as transportation models used for strategic urban development in Krakow and Warsaw. In Delft, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in a project funded by the European Research Council. He is also a winner of an NCN OPUS grant, which is currently in progress at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Jagiellonian University and focuses on shared mobility during the pandemic. “The fact that I am currently conducting my own project and managing a research team of four was very well received by ERC reviewers”, Kucharski says.
A better insight into gene expression
Adam Kłosin is a cell biologist and geneticist studying the mechanisms of gene expression in eukaryotes. The purpose of his StG ERC project, entitled “The Spatial Organization of Gene Regulation in Embryonic Development”, is to study the processes that regulate the spatial organisation of gene expression during the embryonic development and stress response of the model organism, Caenorhabditis elegans. During embryonic development and stress response, transcription factors that regulate gene activity create local condensations in the cell nucleus. Research carried out over the last decade suggests that condensates of this kind form as a result of localised phase separation. Using high-resolution confocal microscopy, the project will investigate their properties, functions and regulation, and then develop new techniques for the study of interactions between transcription factors and genetic material found in the chromatin sampled from nematode cells. The project will contribute to a better understanding of the basic mechanisms of gene regulation during cell differentiation in normal development, as well as under conditions of environmental stress (e.g. at elevated temperatures).
Condensates formed by transcription factor HSF-1 in nuclei of an early C. elegans embryo during heat stress, photo A. Kłosin
Adam Kłosin studied at universities in Perugia and Dresden, earned his PhD at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics in Dresden. He is a winner of the “Polish Returns” programme, organised by the NAWA in 2022, within the framework of which he will carry out a research project funded by the NCN and entitled “Znaczenie wewnętrznie nieuporządkowanych domen białkowych w różnicowaniu komórek”/”The Role of Intrinsically Disordered Protein Domains in Cell Differentiation”.
Support from people and institutions
ERC 2022 winners emphasise that, throughout their application process, they were lucky to enjoy the support of many people and institutions, including their home universities, the Office of Excellence, PAS and KPK NCBR. They could discuss their proposals with specialists in their fields and, at the second stage of the call, took part in presentation delivery workshops and consultations with native speakers. “If you try to prepare an ERC proposal single-handedly, you are setting yourself up for failure, I think”, says Piotr Wcisło.
Starting Grants are available to researchers within 2 to 7 years of their PhD defence, for projects of up to 5 years; the ERC supports innovative ideas in all disciplines of science.
In total, this round of the call attracted 2932 calls; 408 of these won funding, for a success rate of c. 14%. Grant winners represent 46 nationalities and work in 26 different countries. Grants will also be carried out by six Polish researchers affiliated at foreign institutions.
In previous rounds, the European Research Council awarded 37 Starting Grants to researchers working in Poland. With 10 grant winners, 2021 was the most successful year for Poland thus far.
