Polish and Austrian researchers headed by Dr hab. Mikołaj Korzyński from the Center for Theoretical Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences will study electromagnetic and gravitational waves.

The project “Lensing of electromagnetic and gravitational waves” aims to help us understand how waves emitted by distant astronomical objects that are the main source of information about the Universe available for astronomers, travel through the spacetime. The researchers will advance the theory of their propagation through curved spacetimes and will study two examples of astrophysical wave sources: a supermassive black hole and strongly lensed galaxy. They will address the question if it is possible to detect transverse motions of such objects and gravitational lenses by monitoring their precise positions over a 10-year period.

Austrian researchers will be headed by Marius Adrian Oancea from the Vienna University and the Polish project budget will be nearly 1.5 million zlotys. The proposal was evaluated by the Austrian Science Fund, and the evaluation results were accepted by the National Science Centre under the Weave collaboration.

Weave-UNISONO and Lead Agency Procedure (LAP)

The Weave programme builds on the multilateral international cooperation between the research funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures of research proposals in all academic disciplines involving researchers from two or three European countries.

The winning projects are selected pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure which means that only one partner institution performs the merit-based evaluation, while the other partners must accept the evaluation results.

Under the Weave programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding of their projects to the Lead Agency and their respective research funding institutions participating in the Weave programme. Joint projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly defined.

The Weave-UNISONO call is carried out on an ongoing basis. Research teams intending to cooperate with partners from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxemburg and Belgium-Flanders, are encouraged to read the call text and apply.

15 September 2025, the OPUS 30+LAP/Weave call for research projects will be launched. The autumn edition of the OPUS call will include proposals for research projects carried out in international collaboration pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP) under the Weave programme. 

OPUS 30 LAP collaboration under the Weave programme

In 2025, the National Science Centre has cooperated with:

• the Austrian Science Fund (FWF),
• the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR ),
• the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS),
• the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF),
• the German Research Foundation  (DFG),
• the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), and
• the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) from Belgium-Flanders.

The NCN as the lead agency under OPUS 30 will perform a merit-based evaluation of OPUS LAP funding proposals for research projects carried out in bilateral or trilateral cooperation by research teams from Poland, Austria, Czechia, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg or Belgium-Flanders under the Weave programme. If a project is recommended for funding, the NCN will finance Polish research teams, while foreign research teams will be funded by foreign partners.

Proposal Development

The OPUS 30 call is open to OPUS LAP proposals:

• drafted by Polish research teams in collaboration with foreign research teams pursuant to the OPUS 30 Call Text published on the NCN page on 15 September 2025,
• in any academic discipline covered by NCN panels,
• for basic research projects that have not been funded by the NCN or from other sources,
• involving scientific collaboration based on balanced and complementary contribution of all research teams that seek parallel funding of the projects from their respective research-funding agencies under the Weave programme, which means that the contribution of each team involved in the project is significant and necessary, and their respective tasks complement one another to create a coherent joint research project. OPUS LAP proposals that do not meet that requirement must not be recommended for funding.

Polish research teams submit their OPUS LAP proposals via the OSF submission system. The submission deadline is 15 December 2025, 2 pm. Foreign research teams involved in a project within the framework of Weave cooperation must also submit a funding proposal, including a set of required documents, to its respective research-funding agency, by the date and according to the terms specified thereby. If a partner institution requires applicants to submit a copy of the OPUS LAP proposals to its respective submission system, a complete English language version of the OPUS LAP proposal in PDF format must be generated following submission of the OPUS LAP proposal to the OSF submission system, and sent to the foreign research team. OPUS LAP proposals submitted to the NCN and partner institutions must be identical.  

The European Partnership on One Health Antimicrobial Resistance (EUP OHAMR), the 10-year programme (2025-2035) launched on 1 June 2025, brings together 53 organisations from 30 countries in EU and beyond, providing joint support to research and innovation and mobilising to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) with a One Health approach.

The first EUP OHAMR joint transnational call for projects will be launched in November 2025 within the focus area of providing innovative and cost-effective treatment options. The estimated budget is approx. 35 million Euros. More information regarding the thematic scope and timeline of the call will be published in an official pre-announcement in Autumn 2025. The detailed thematic description and all requirements for applicants will be available in the call announcement to be published in November 2025.

Please find more information on the OHAMR first Call: https://ohamr.eu/2025/06/12/research-call-2025/

The actions of the EUP OHAMR are organised within four programmes:

• R&I funding programme, which will provide financial support to AMR R&I.
• Capacity strengthening programme, which will support training, networking and collaboration across disciplines, One Health sectors, countries and career stages.
• Data exploitation programme, which will facilitate and promote access, sharing and (re)use of data and research infrastructures.
• Impact programme, which will support knowledge mobilisation and uptake of research results into products, practice and policy for maximum societal impact.

The results of OPUS 28+LAP/Weave are now available. OPUS 28+LAP/Weave is a call for research projects carried out in bilateral collaboration with researchers from Austria, Belgium-Flanders, Czechia and Switzerland, and in trilateral collaboration between researchers from Poland, Belgium and Austria. A total funding of over 58 million zlotys was awarded to 31 research projects.

2,039 proposals were submitted to the NCN under OPUS 28+LAP/Weave, for a total of over 3.2 billion zlotys, including 1,823 domestic proposals for nearly 3 billion zlotys and 216 proposals for over 320 million zlotys following the Lead Agency formula. The results of NCN (domestic) projects funded under OPUS 28 were published at the end of May, and the first ranking list for proposals following the Lead Agency formula, including projects performed by research teams from Poland and Luxemburg, was published in June. The recent recommendations include funding proposals for projects performed in collaboration with research teams from Austria, Belgium-Flanders, Czechia and Switzerland.

Collaboration with Czechia, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland 

Under the recent edition of the OPUS LAP call, 17 projects will be performed by the Polish research team in collaboration with Czech researchers, including five projects in Life Sciences, six in Physical Sciences and Engineering and six in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences. Three awarded projects will involve collaboration of teams from Poland and Austria, including two in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Science and one in Physical Sciences and Engineering. Two research projects (one in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences and one in Physical Sciences and Engineering) will be carried out by Polish researchers in collaboration with research teams from Belgium-Flanders, and seven projects in collaboration with researchers from Switzerland (one in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences, three in Life Sciences and three in Physical Sciences and Engineering).  

Principal investigators in Polish teams performing recommended projects on the ranking list published today, are researchers affiliated with research institutes from nine cities in Poland. Most of them are based in Warsaw, Wrocław, Gdańsk and Łódź, although ranking lists include research teams from Poznań, Krakow, Toruń, Katowice and Szczecin.

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking Lists

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking List for bilateral projects performed by researchers from Poland and Czechia (.pdf)

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking List for bilateral projects performed by researchers from Poland and Belgium (.pdf)

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking List for bilateral projects performed by researchers from Poland and Austria (.pdf)

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking List for bilateral projects performed by researchers from Poland and Switzerland (.pdf)

OPUS 28+LAP/Weave Ranking List for trilateral projects performed by researchers from Poland, Belgium and Austria (.pdf)

Autumn Results

Recommended LAP proposals involving Slovenian and German collaboration are currently pending approval under OPUS 28+LAP/Weave. The ranking lists will be published by the end of October. Call Timeline.

Service of Decisions 

Decisions by the NCN Director are delivered to the applicants and no longer communicated to the principal investigator if the applicant is defined in Article 27 (1)-(7) and Article 27 (() of the NCN Act. If individuals apply, funding decisions are not communicated to the participating entity. More on service of decisions.

The first attempts to combine the national resources with the European digital research environment. Mechanisms that have proven effective. The best way to manage the entire venture. Over 50 experts representing 13 candidate Nodes of the EOSC Federation and the EOSC EU Node discussed these issues at the meeting held in the National Science Centre. They helped prepare the launch of the EOSC Federation at the EOSC Symposium in November. 

EOSC Federation Build-up Group Meeting 

The EOSC Federation Build-Up Group met on 17 and 18 June 2025 at the premises pf the National Science Centre in Kraków, Poland to benchmark the progress of work, and to agree on the next steps toward launch of the EOSC Federation.

The meeting began with a welcome from Aneta Pazik-Aybar, Head of the Open Science Team at the National Science Centre, the host of the meeting and the organisation behind the Polish national candidate node, EOSC-PL. The EOSC Association (EOSC-A) Secretary General Ute Gunsenheimer and the EC’s Stefan Liebler (of DG Research and Innovation) also welcomed the participants, and a letter from Volker Beckmann, EOSC Steering Board’s Chair, was read out.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the candidate Nodes of the EOSC Federation: BBMRI ERIC, CERN, CNR (Blue-Cloud 2026), CNRS (Data Terra) – French national Node, CSC-IT Center for Science – Finnish national Node, CVTI SR – Slovakian national Node, Life Science Research Node (on behalf of ELIXIR, EMBL, Euro-BioImaging ERIC, and Instruct-ERIC), ESRF (PaNOSC), EUDAT, Foundation ICSC – Italian national Node, NFDI – German national Node, SURF – Dutch national Node, and EOSC-PL – Polish national Node.

The following institutions will collaborate under the EOSC-PL national Node: the National Science Centre (NCN), Academic Computer Centre Cyfronet AGH, Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw (ICM UW), Gdańsk University of Technology (PG), and Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences. Other participants included representatives of the EOSC EU Node from the European Commission (DG CNECT), Athena RC and Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Centre (PCSS).

At the plenary session, the EOSC Node candidates and EOSC EU Node gave an update of the actions completed over the last three months and challenges they faced. The group’s primary objective in developing the Federation’s scientific use cases in time for the EOSC Symposium in early November to demonstrate the added value that the EOSC Federation will bring to European research and researchers. The initiative will also support European researchers by offering a digital environment for conducting research.

An important part of the meeting was the discussion on the results of the first attempt to federate resources with the EOSC EU Node launched by the European Commission last October. The second part of the meeting featured discussions on federating capabilities, resources, governance and use cases. Representatives of the working groups[1] reported and discussed the topics that were formed at the initial stage of Federation’s development. The sub-groups aim to develop common solutions. While usually working online, they had the chance to meet face-to-face in Krakow to determine the next steps.

Cases of Use

A consensus was reached on five scientific use cases suggested by the candidate Nodes that will be presented at the EOSC Symposium:

• Exploring the impact of marine microbiomes on carbon sequestration;
• Cross-node workflows for the analysis of CERN’s ATLAS/CMS experiment’s open data on the REANA reusable data platform and the processing of imaging data from the environmental and life sciences using the Galaxy platform;
• The photon and neutron federated knowledge finder, PaN-Finder, an AI-enabled data search tool to for navigating the large data sets of European Research Infrastructures;
• A prostate cancer screening tool, MCVAL, that employs multi-centric validation of AI models; and
• The use of genomic sequencing analysis to facilitate cross-border surveillance of anti-microbial resistance.

Next in Helsinki

The meeting ended with a discussion on the possible criteria and procedures for enrolling future EOSC Nodes, a process that will be led by the EOSC Tripartite Governance.

The next in-person meeting is planned for Helsinki on 01-02 October 2025.

We now know the recent winners of know Weave-UNISONO. Researchers from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology will work on the production and use of entangled photons for information transfer in secure quantum networks, while a team from the Jagiellonian University will investigate how biopolitics developed during World War I. Both teams will cooperate with partners from Austria and Germany.

Research on entangled photons

The first of the awarded projects, entitled “Clear entanglement through dark states,” will be conducted by a team from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Dr Michał Gawełczyk. On the Austrian side, the team from the University of Innsbruck will be led by Gregor Weihs, the team from the Johannes Kepler University in Linz will be led by Armando Rastelli, and on the German side, the team from the TU Dortmund University will be led by Doris Reiter. The funding awarded amounts to almost PLN 1 million.

In the planned research, semiconductor quantum dots will be used to entangle photons, which will thus be able to safely carry information in quantum networks. It turns out, however, that the type of entanglement most commonly used to date, polarised entanglement, has its weaknesses because it undergoes decoherence, i.e. partial destruction, in optical fibres. Therefore, there is room for improvement in this process. The funded project will attempt to develop new ways of creating entangled states, primarily through the use of dark exciton (a quantum object in which an electron interacts with a missing electron) to generate temporal entanglement. The research of entangled particles can help find answers to fundamental questions about quantum physics and also enable the development of quantum technologies, including secure telecommunications.

Shaping the biopolitics of wartime

The second project will be conducted under the leadership of Dr. Kamil Ruszała from the Jagiellonian University. On the Austrian side, the team from the University of Vienna will be led by Prof. Dr Kerstin von Lingen, while German researchers from the Humboldt University of Berlin by Dr Oksana Nagornaia. The funding awarded amounts to almost PLN 600.000.

The project entitled “Forging Wartime Biopolitics: Militarised Refugees' Bodies and Environments in WWI Eastern Europe” innovatively combines the history of mass displacement with medical and environmental history, going beyond the methodological framework of national historiographies. In doing so, it opens up new fields for understanding migration crises both in the past and in the present, exploring responses to crises in different contexts. The impact of military actions on the environment and everyday lifeworlds during World War I, which has been little recognised in the academic debate to date, will be examined, with a focus on war-related displacement in Eastern Europe. The innovative potential of the project lies in providing comprehensive insights through advanced data processing and GIS mapping (creation and analysis of geographic data in a geographic information system), offering a multidimensional perspective of the complex history on the Eastern Front of World War I.

Weave-UNISONO and lead agency procedure

The proposals were evaluated by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), while the National Science Centre and the German DFG agency accepted the results of the evaluation as part of their cooperation under the Weave programme. The NCN will fund the work of Polish research groups. Funding for the Austrian teams will be provided by the FWF and for the German teams by the DFG.

The Weave Programme builds on the multilateral international cooperation between the research funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures of research proposals for joint multilateral international research projects, involving researchers from two or three European countries.

Winners are selected pursuant to the lead agency procedure, whereby only one partner institution is in charge of the merit-based evaluation of proposals, with the other partners accepting the results of the evaluation.

Under the Weave programme, partner research teams apply for parallel funding to the lead agency and to their respective participating institutions. Joint research projects must include a coherent research program with the added value of the international cooperation clearly defined.

The Weave-UNISONO call is open on a continuous basis. Research teams intending to collaborate with partners from Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to read the call text and submit their proposals.

The MINIATURA 9 call for proposals is addressed to researchers whose PhD degree was awarded after 1 January 2013, who are not former winners of NCN calls and whose scientific achievements include at least one paper published or at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art. Basic research activities of up to 12 months may be carried out in the form of preliminary studies, library and archive searches or research visits.

The grants under the MINIATURA call for proposals are intended to provide an initial funding source for the preparation of full-scale research projects. Within this year's call, we have launched a mentoring programme through which participants can benefit from the support of an experienced mentor or mentee in developing a concept for further research. We encourage principal investigators of ongoing and completed projects funded through MAESTRO, OPUS, SONATA BIS and SONATA, international calls offered by the National Science Centre (NCN), as well as calls offered by the European Research Council (ERC), to sign up to the database. We also encourage those planning to file a proposal through MINIATURA to take advantage of the almost 600 mentoring support offers already available.

Research Topics in the Second Ranking List of the MINIATURA 9 Call for Proposals

A total of 19 research activities received funding in Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences (HS). The winners include Dr Julia Szołtysek from the University of Silesia in Katowice. She will analyse the concept of post-industrial girlhood on the basis on a comparative analysis of fiction by youngest-generation women authors from “post-coal” backgrounds in the Tyne-and-Wear and Upper Silesia regions. Dr Adrian Trzoss of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań will carry out a comparative analysis of the efficiency of Large Language Models (LLM) in generating historical knowledge.

A total of 21 research activities in Life Sciences (NZ) were shortlisted, with a total value of more than PLN 1 million. Dr inż. Henryk Kozłowski of the Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland, will focus on the problem of body temperature as a pivotal factor in the antiviral response, conducting in vitro studies of the macrophages’ signalling pathways in response to hCoV-OC43 infection. Dr Ewelina Tomiak from the University of Agriculture in Krakow, will work on the identification and determination of compounds with therapeutic potential in Opuntia ficus-indica during preliminary research and a research trip.

26 research activities were recommended for funding in Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST), including research into plasma-assisted catalytic ammonia decomposition as an efficient pathway towards clean hydrogen production. The latter will be carried out by Dr inż. Hubert Ronduda from the Warsaw University of Technology. Dr inż. Maria Tunkiewicz from the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn will carry out an assessment of 3D printed concrete resistance to water load in the case of civil protection facilities.

List of research activities recommended for funding under MINIATURA 9 Second Ranking List .

MINIATURA 9 Ranking List No 2 (.pdf)

Funding by discipline:

• Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences (HS): 19 research activities with a value of PLN 539,214
• Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST): 26 research activities with a value of PLN 1,046,050
• Life Sciences: 21 research activities with a value of PLN 1,006,830

Total funding: PLN 2,592,094

Evaluation of Proposals 

MINIATURA proposals are evaluated by the Expert Team appointed by the NCN Council. The evaluation focuses on the scientific achievements of investigators performing research activities, scientific quality, feasibility and potential impact of the research activity on the development of the discipline, justification of the research activity, justification of the project costs with regard to the subject and scope of the research activity, development of proposals, etc. 

The MINIATURA 9 budget of PLN 20 million is divided in proportion to the number of months of the call for proposals, from February to July. Funding can only be awarded to proposals that fit into the pool allotted for the month. In the past, many proposals submitted to MINIATURA towards the end of the call were refused funding due to the lack of sufficient resources. Therefore, please apply well in advance.

Proposals will be accepted until 31 July 2025, 4.00 pm.

Two collaborative projects between Poland and Luxembourg with OPUS 28 + LAP grants for research into Parkinson’s disease pathology and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma immunotherapy. The Polish part of the research is valued at over 5,500,000 zlotys.

OPUS is NCN’s largest call open to researchers at any stage of career, regardless of their age or research experience. The autumn edition follows the Lead Agency formula under which researchers may request funding of international projects carried out in multilateral Weave collaboration. This simplified application procedure involves participation of researchers from Austria, Czechia, Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium (Flanders), and enhanced evaluation procedure. 

Under OPUS LAP (Lead Agency Procedure), funding proposals may be submitted by international research consortia where all partners apply for funding to their respective research-funding agencies and evaluation of proposals is performed by one agency only (in this case, the National Science Centre), while the other agencies approve the evaluation results, thereby funding their respective research teams. Polish research teams are funded by the NCN.

2,039 proposals were submitted to OPUS 28+LAP/Weave, for a total of over 3.2 billion zlotys, of which 1,823 domestic proposals for a total of nearly 3 billion and 216 proposals for over 320 million zlotys following the Lead Agency formula. The results for Polish projects funded under OPUS 28 were published at the end of May.

Collaborative Research Between Researchers from Poland and Luxembourg 

The NCN experts recommended two collaborative projects for funding, for a total of over 5.5 million zlotys. They will be performed by research teams from Poland and Luxembourg. The recommendations were approved by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

One of the projects will be carried out by the Polish research team headed by Prof. Leonora Bużańska from the Mossakowski Medical Research Institute Polish Academy of Sciences in collaboration with researchers from the University of Luxembourg. Researchers will study the role of aged microglia in exacerbating Parkinson’s Disease pathology. Normally, microglia help keep the brain healthy by clearing away waste and protecting neurons. But as we age, microglia can become overactive, releasing harmful substances that might damage nearby neurons and worsen diseases. The researchers will use an exciting new approach: brain organoids grown in the lab, to analyse how aging affects microglia, and how these changes interact with the toxic proteins that build up in Parkinson’s. The NCN will fund research of the Polish team valued at nearly 3 million zlotys.

The other project will be carried out by a research team headed by Prof. Iwona Inkielewicz-Stępniak from the Medical University of Gdańsk. Researchers from Poland and Luxembourg will study the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma immunotherapy. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 85–90% of all pancreatic malignancies. PDAC is a challenging cancer to treat, and in most of cases, radiotherapy and chemotherapy are inefficient treatments. In the last decade, immunotherapies have become major breakthroughs in the fight against cancer, however there is a limited efficacy of current immunotherapies against pancreatic cancer. Researchers from the Medical University of Gdańsk and the Luxembourg Institute of Health will evaluate and validate NK (Natural Killer) cell-based and graphen oxide nanoparticles immunotherapy approaches against pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The National Science Centre will award over 2.5 million zlotys for the Polish part of the project.

Projects recommended for funding by the NCN under OPUS 28+LAP/Weave include LAP proposals (pending approval) involving collaboration with researchers from Austria, Belgium-Flanders, Czechia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany. Publication of call results - dates.

Service of Decisions Modified 

The funding decisions by the NCN director are only served on the applicants and are not communicated to the principal investigator if the applicant is specified in Article 27 (1) - (7) and Article 27 (9) of the NCN Act. If an individual applies, funding decisions are not served on the participating entity specified in the proposal. More information on the service of decisions .

Four researchers from Poland won prestigious ERC Advanced Grant. The winners include Prof. Paweł Moskal and Dr hab. Cezary Galewicz from the Jagiellonian University, both NCN Award winners. 

The ERC Advanced Grants are the most prestigious funding schemes that give senior researchers the opportunity to pursue ambitious projects often leading to major scientific breakthroughs. Researchers with significant research achievements can win funding of up to € 2.5 million for their research projects performed over a period of up to 5 years.

The winning applicants of the latest edition include two NCN Award winners. 

Exotic Positronium Atom

Prof. Paweł Moskal from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy, and Applied Computer Science, Jagiellonian University received funding for his project “Can tissue oxidation be sensed by positronium?” He will work on developing a method for non-invasive assessment of hypoxia (oxygen deficiency in tissues) which is one of the major challenges in modern medical imaging. Prof. Moskal will focus on creating a novel method for measuring the level of oxygen concentration in tissues by measuring photons from positronium annihilation inside cells. The exotic positronium atom (a bound state of an electron and a positron) is produced in the human body during diagnosis performed by positron emission tomography (PET).

Voices from the Deep South 

Prof. Cezary Galewicz from the Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University will carry out the project „Voices from the Deep South: the rise of Pattu song cultures of South Asia.” The project offers a completely new perspective on the history of song cultures in South Asia, with a particular focus on southern India. It aims to create a digital archive of songs, and to study how regional song cultures impacted communities effectively resisting high cultures associated with literary languages of prestige, but also inspiring and transforming them. The project's tasks will include 'historical mapping' of the most important regional cultures of this kind, their typologisation, and articulating mutual relationships and differences. Prof. Galewicz will try to completely reconfigure the historical understanding of the coexistence of high literary cultures and those that were termed 'folk' or 'subordinate' with possible consequences for research in many other regions.

More on research performed by Prof. Paweł Moskal and Prof. Cezary Galewicz

ERC Advanced Grants 2024

2,534 funding proposals were submitted to the latest edition of the ERC Advanced Grant, of which over 11 percent were recommended for funding. The total grants of over €721 million will go to 281 researchers from 23 EU Member States and associated countries.

ERC AdvG 2024 - statistics

We are now taking in proposals under MAESTRO addressed to well-established and outstanding researchers, and under SONATA BIS for research projects aiming to create a new research team. The overall budget of the two calls is 195,000,000 zlotys.

The calls are addressed to researchers aiming to conduct research projects at research institutions across Poland. The two calls are open to basic research proposals covering any subject from 26 NCN panels in three research domains: Humanities, Social Sciences and Art Sciences (HS), Physical Sciences and Engineering (ST) and Life Sciences. NCN grants may be used to cover the cost of research and remuneration.

Grants for Well-Established and Outstanding Researchers 

Ogłoszenie konkursów Maestro 17 i Sonata Bis 15 MAESTRO is the most prestigious call of the National Science Centre addressed to researchers aiming to conduct pioneering research, including interdisciplinary research, which is significant for the development of science, goes beyond the current state-of-the-art and may result in scientific discoveries.

The call with the budget of 25,000,000 zlotys is open to PhD holders who have had at least five papers published in renowned Polish or international academic press/ journals within the last 10 years, have acted as the principal investigator in at least two research projects funded under national or international calls for proposals, and meet other criteria concerning awarded prizes, participation in conferences, membership of committees and associations.

MAESTRO projects may be carried out over a period of 36, 48 or 60 months. There is no cap on funding per project, however project budgets are evaluated by the Expert Team and must be well justified. Apart from the principal investigator, research teams must involve participation of post-docs (up to 12 years post PhD) or PhD students, for the total period of at least 72 months in the research team is obligatory, who mut be selected in open calls. Research teams may also include senior researchers, supporting specialists persons occupying specialist supporting positions (e.g. lab manager, senior technician, statistical analyst) and students.

Principal investigators who have managed a MAESTRO project in the past may submit a funding proposal to the current edition of the call if they are European Research Council (ERC) grant winners or have submitted a grant proposal to the ERC over the past five years which has been evaluated at least in stage I of the call.

MAESTRO 17 call

SONATA BIS for Research Teams

SONATA BIS supports formation of new research teams to conduct basic research. Principal investigators must be researchers with a PhD degree conferred between 01 January 2013 and 31 December 2020 (which can be extended by evidenced career breaks).

SONATA BIS projects must be performed over a period of 36, 48 or 60 months. Apart from the principal investigator, research teams may include post-docs, supporting specialists, students, PhD students and other co-investigators. Engagement of PhD holders for 36 months is required. The terms of the call do not specify the required number of research team members or total budget. The principal investigators are free to alight the budget with project requirements.  

Apart from the principal investigator, new research teams created under SONATA BIS must not include researchers holding an academic title, title of professor, habilitation degree or equivalent degree or former collaborators involved in a project funded in a call. One can be the principal investigator of a SONATA BIS project only once.

SONATA BIS 15 has a budget of 170,000,000 zlotys.

SONATA BIS 15 call

Evaluation of Proposals 

Proposals submitted to MAESTRO 17 and SONATA BIS 15 undergo an eligibility check by the NCN coordinators, followed by a merit-based evaluation performed in two stages by the inter-panel Expert Teams (HS, ST, NZ) selected by the NCN Council.

At Stage I of the merit-based evaluation, individual reviews are drafted by two members of the Expert Team that are discussed at the first panel meeting. At the end of Stage II, the Expert Team agrees on a final score for each proposal and compiles a list of proposals recommended for Stage II of evaluation.

At Stage II, at least two reviews are drafted by external reviewers, and the principal investigator is interviewed by the Expert Team at the NCN offices in Krakow. At the second panel meeting, the Expert Team agrees upon the final score for each proposal and compiles the final ranking lists of proposals recommended for funding.

Submission Dates and Results

Proposals are submitted electronically, via the OSF submission system. Proposal forms will be available on 18 June onwards and can be submitted until 16 September, 2:00 (CEST). The call results will be published by March 2026.