Over the past few months, the NCN Council has discussed many topics, e.g. NCN call portfolio, principal investigator’s grace period and mentoring programme. Prof. Alicja Kazek-Kęsik writes about the work of the Council.

Prof. Karol Życzkowski has been awarded the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant for his research in quantum mechanics. The ERC Advanced Grant was awarded to a researcher working in Poland for the thirteenth time. 

“It seemed to me that the NCN (...) thought through its principles really well”, says Michał Żmihorski. “The fact that the NCN decided to host the meeting at all shows that it is open to the voices coming from the scientific community”, adds Wojciech Jasiński. We asked 5 researchers for feedback on a meeting that took place in Kraków on 4 June.

We are now taking in proposals under the SONATA BIS 14 call for researchers planning to set up new research teams and MAESTRO 16 for advanced researchers involved in pioneering research. The total budget of the two calls is PLN 170 million.

“Science for Policy – Policy for Science” was the theme of the Fourth Polish-German Science Meeting, held on June 10–11 in Warsaw. The event was organized by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) in cooperation with Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Researchers from Bydgoszcz, Gliwice, Lodz, Szczecin, Warsaw and Wroclaw among winning applicants of prestigious IMPRESS-U. Projects will be carried out in international collaboration with US and Ukrainian scientists. NCN will award over 7.3 million zlotys for that purpose.

The findings of recent research into a new nematic phase of liquid crystals, discovered by scientists from the Military University of Technology (WAT) and the University of Warsaw, were just published by “Science”. The research was conducted within the framework of an NCN-funded project and is expected to find many important applications.

All 323 proposals that were put on waiting lists under OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22, MAESTRO 15 and SONATA BIS 13 will now be funded, swelling the ranks of winners from 452 to 774.

Researchers from various research centres, NCN Council members and other NCN representatives gathered in Kraków to discuss the need to support basic research, increase the NCN budget and work out solutions to allow the agency to better respond to the needs of the academic community. The meeting was held on 4 June.