Dr hab. Wiktor Lewandowski is a chemist working in photonics and materials chemistry and a professor at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Warsaw. He is also the winner of this year’s NCN Award for Physical Sciences and Engineering for his groundbreaking technique for the production of chiral photonic nanomaterials.

Lewandowski will talk about his research in the “Science in the Centre” series, organised by the Copernicus Centre and the NCN. The meeting will take place at 6 pm on Wednesday, 20 November and will be livestreamed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Centre.

Nanotechnology, or the science of materials and structures at nanometre scale, is opening up new horizons for all of us. Materials with dimensions of less than one billionth of a metre show properties that may revolutionise many areas of our lives. Some nanotechnology products are already available in the market, ranging from QLED TV sets, which offer previously unheard-of image quality, to rapid test kits that have improved our diagnostic capabilities. A technique for the production of certain kinds of nanomaterials was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2023.

But do we understand the full potential of nanotechnology? Do we really know how to tap it, especially in view of their strong interactions with light? It is the ability to control the way nanomaterials interact with light that might hold the key to rapid new advances in optoelectronics and photonics.

In their research, Prof. Lewandowski and his team have demonstrated that it is possible to obtain the helical organisation of nanoparticles using liquid crystals. This self-organisation leads to the production of chiral materials that respond differently to light of opposite circular polarisations. The strategy proposed by the team is scalable and can be applied to various types of nanomaterials. Moreover, in a sense, it goes beyond what nature itself has achieved in the realm of nanotechnology. It proves that by understanding and harnessing the principles of self-organisation, we can create materials with completely novel properties.

JPIAMR has announced the results of the 17th call for transnational research projects in the field of antibiotic resistance. Among the thirteen awarded projects, three will be carried out by research teams based in Wroclaw and Warsaw. The total amount of funding provided by the NCN for these projects is over PLN 4.2 million.

The principal objective of this year's call Interventions moving forward to promote action to counteract the emergence and spread of bacterial and fungal resistance and to improve treatments, was to take action against the growing global threat of increased spread of antimicrobial (antibacterial and antifungal) resistance by funding international collaborative research projects aimed at improving, comparing and evaluating the efficacy, cost-effectiveness and uptake of existing interventions against bacterial or fungal infections and/or designing new interventions against fungal infections.

The IMPACT call was open to scientists working in Polish research organisations, who intend to carry out international research projects in collaboration with partners from 19 countries around the world. A total of 154 international consortia submitted proposals in answer to the call, and thirteen were recommended for funding. The three winning Polish research teams will receive funding of over PLN 4.2 million from NCN to further their research.

• PHASEK – Combination of bacteriophages and other antimicrobial agents as a strategy to combat multidrug-resistant E. coli and K. pneumoniae bacteria

The Principal Investigator is Prof. Krystyna Dabrowska, PhD, from the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Wrocław. The project has been awarded over than PLN 1.2 million.

• PHAGES-AntiPERS – Strategies for phage therapy against bacterial persister cells

The leader of the Polish team is Prof. Zuzanna Drulis-Kawa, PhD, from the University of Wroclaw. The project budgeted over PLN 1.2 million.

• FunHitDisco –Platform for high-throughput search for antifungal compounds.

The Principal Investigator is Dr. Maria Klimecka from the University of Warsaw. The project has been awarded over PLN 1.7 million.

The Minister of Science, Dariusz Wieczorek, met with Council members and representatives of the NCN office to discuss research funding, the work of the agency and a new team to deal with ongoing cooperation

“The NCN is essential for Polish science. We will be taking efforts to make sure that the state budget includes adequate resources to fund its tasks,” Dariusz Wieczorek said on 14 November in Kraków.

This year, the research-funding subsidy for the NCN was increased by 200 million zlotys. In September, the NCN Council issued an appeal, urging the government to raise the 2025 budget of the agency by a further 300 million for research funding and 2 million for its daily operation. However, if adopted, the current draft state budget, will only increase spending on the NCN by 50 million. During the meeting in Kraków, the Minister stressed that the legislative process is still underway, and the amount may still increase. “In this case, we are on the same side. As for the NCN, I am optimistic,” he said.  The Minister of Science, Dariusz Wieczorek joins NCN Council session, photo: MNiSW

The Minister also underscored that “our key concern right now is security” and the bulk of state resources go towards the military and weapons. Next year, the budget of the Minister of National Defence will climb up to 186 billion zlotys. “I am aware, as is any minister, that the geopolitical situation means we may need to give up on some of our aspirations,” he said.

Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, the NCN Director, pointed out that, today, weaponry consists “not only of tanks and cannons,” but also of cybersecurity and social defence against manipulation and disinformation campaigns. “This is an area in which I can see an important role for basic research, and I think others would agree with me,” he said and went on to declare that the NCN would draft a strategy that would allow a certain amount of the military budget to be slated for NCN calls related to these issues. The participants in the meeting also suggested that the NCN might organise calls for proposals devoted to, e.g. health and energy security. Minister Wieczorek welcomed the offer of the new strategy with interest and promised to discuss it with the Ministry of National Defence.

Council Members and the NCN Director also emphasised the need to increase the subsidies for the NCN and allow greater flexibility in how they are spent, which would enable the agency, e.g. to raise salaries. “One of the quality indicators that measure how well funding agencies around the world do their job is a good ratio of office costs to grants. The NCN ranks very high in this respect, which shows that our agency’s staff do a great job and should be supported in their work,” emphasised Prof. Tomasz Dietl from the NCN Council.

Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak pointed out that the agency’s costs represent less than 3% of the total worth of awarded grants, which is “an exceptional achievement.” “The truth is that people are the most important element of the system,” he said.

Council members also indicated that the NCN should appoint a new team to deal with ongoing cooperation between the agency and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. They said it would be important to create a space for regular meetings between NCN Council and NCN office members with delegates from the Ministry, not necessarily the Minister himself, but his specially appointed representatives. “We are planning to set up a team to deal with these matters at the operational level and take the necessary decisions,” the Minister reassured them.

Thirteen bilateral Polish-German projects and three trilateral projects conducted in partnership with scientists based in Austria and the Czech Republic were awarded funding under the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme. The total budget of Polish teams in these projects is approx. 29.8 million zlotys.

OPUS is the largest call for proposals in the NCN portfolio; in the autumn, it also opens a track for researchers seeking funds for projects carried out in cooperation with international partners under the Weave programme. The programme makes it significantly easier to apply for grants for bi- or multilateral research cooperation with researchers based in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders. As per its rules, proposals are only evaluated once in one of the partner countries, while the other funding agencies only approve the decision and award funding to their national research teams involved in the project.

The most recent LAP projects awarded funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave include bilateral projects conducted with partners in Germany and trilateral projects with the additional participation of Austria and the Czech Republic. The proposals were evaluated by the NCN experts alongside other OPUS 26 proposals in accordance with the Lead Agency Procedure. The decisions were then approved by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), which is going to fund German teams, as well as the Czech Science Foundation, for Czech teams, and the Austrian Science Fund, for Austrian partners.

Winners and their research

In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, funding was awarded to 2 projects with a total budget of nearly 4 million zlotys. One grant went to a Polish-German project headed by Prof. Adam Izdebski from the University of Warsaw, which will look into why some societies have succeeded and survived for hundreds of years, while others have failed. The researchers will analyse the crisis and reconstruction of the social and ecological systems of Brandenburg and Greater Poland between 1200 and 1800, focusing on internal factors (institutions, cultural and material resources, political stability) and external factors that impact the state system, both environmental (climate, epidemics) and international (wars, markets).

In Physical Sciences and Engineering, funding was awarded to 11 projects worth more than 17.8 million zlotys. One project, entitled ”Continuous protein crystallization process”, headed by Prof. Dorota Antos from the Rzeszów University of Technology, will work in tandem with researchers based in Germany and Austria to develop a novel method of obtaining and purifying recombinant proteins (necessary, for instance, for diagnostic and therapeutic applications), based on crystallization, which will enable them to be produced efficiently and sustainably at a lower cost. The new method is expected to increase the availability of these proteins to low- and medium-income countries so that they can also reap the benefits of advancements in contemporary medicine.

In Life Sciences, funding was awarded to 3 projects with a total budget of nearly 8 million zlotys. One grant went to Dr Aleksandra Rutkowska from the Gdańsk Medical University, who will head a team of Polish researchers, in partnership with a German team, in a project entitled “Mechanisms in the pathogenesis of CNS diseases induced by viral infections”. Specifically, the researchers will try to determine whether an Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection can be associated with the development of multiple sclerosis. Their research may contribute to our knowledge of how the virus leads to long-term problems in the central nervous system and potentially change our understanding of autoimmune diseases.

List of all 16 funded projects with partners in Germany, Czech Republic and Austria in .pdf

Ranking lists of all projects qualified for funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave with outlines

OPUS and OPUS LAP results

A total of 1737 proposals with a total budget of nearly 2.6 billion zlotys were submitted to the NCN under the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave programme. In the first round, grants worth 441 million zlotys were awarded to 267 researchers working on projects that did not involve any international cooperation under Weave. Results for OPUS LAP projects performed in cooperation with partners in Austria, Belgium-Flanders, the Czech Republic and Switzerland were announced in July, with 29 international projects worth more than 42.34 million zlotys joining the ranks of Weave winners. In August, a grant of 1.4 million zlotys went to one Polish-Luxembourgian project, and several months later, in early November, 5 more grants (worth more than 7.5 million zlotys in total) were awarded to teams working in tandem with Slovenian researchers.

These OPUS LAP results for bilateral projects carried out in partnership with German teams and, for trilateral projects, with Austrian and Czech teams, are the last announcements for the OPUS 26+LAP/Weave call. Funding was awarded to 11 projects from the original list and to 5 more from waiting lists. More about waiting lists.

After tallying the results of all rounds held thus far, the final list of OPUS 26+LAP/Weave winners consists of 318 projects worth more than 522 million zlotys.

Decisions

Funding decisions for bilateral projects with partners from Germany and trilateral projects with partners from Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, recommended for funding under OPUS 26+LAP/Weave, were sent out on 15 November. Decisions issued by the NCN Director are delivered electronically to the electronic address indicated in the proposal. How are funding decisions delivered?

In January 2025, the National Science Centre is slated to start as the official coordinator of the European Social Transformations and Resilience (STR) partnership. The agency will be the only institution in this part of Europe to lead an initiative of this kind.

“This is more than just a prestigious role, this is a real opportunity to define the subject matter of future calls and shape the main objectives of the partnership so that they include Polish priorities,” says Dr Malwina Gębalska, who manages the STR team at the NCN.

Partnerships bring together the European Commission, public institutions and the private sector in a quest for answers to the most important challenges faced by Europe, including climate change, environmental pollution, the loss of biodiversity and digital transformation. They are a key element of Horizon Europe, significantly contributing to the development of the European Research Area and the achievement of EU’s political priorities.

The 2021-2024 period saw the rise of 50 such initiatives. Nine more are slated to take off in the years 2025-2027; this includes the Social Transformations and Resilience (STR) partnership. Apart from one cultural heritage protection initiative, the STR will be the only partnership in the field of humanities and social science. It will organise calls for international research projects in humanities and social sciences, as well as develop and test tools and policies designed to make countries more resilient to natural disasters and social challenges caused by climate change, demographic changes, technological advancement and unexpected crises such as wars and pandemics.

The initiative will support creating a research-based policy in four main areas: the modernisation of social security and basic services systems, the future of labour, education support and skill development and fair transition toward climate neutrality. The partnership will take the next two years to delineate these issues, creating documents such as the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, which will then be presented at the European Commission. The STR team coordinator at the NCN says that the strategy-making process will be very open-ended: “We want to determine what kind of research is really needed today in Europe: what we already know and what we still need to investigate, what issues deserve our attention and what social policy actions should be taken up”, Malwina Gębalska explains.

The partnership is currently made up of Germany, France, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Italy and Poland. The goal is to include perhaps as many as approx. 100 entities, including, most importantly, government ministries and research-funding agencies. Partners and stakeholders will also include universities, research institutes, NGOs, associations and non-academic entities from several dozen countries.

“We are going to start off with a state of the research survey prepared by European scientists, and then carry out consultations via workshops and an online platform. The platform will be a place for researchers and other stakeholders to submit their feedback regarding the four subject areas”, adds Dr Gębalska. In the nearest future, the NCN will begin to issue invitations for humanities and social science scholars to join the strategy-making process.

Gębalska emphasises that Western European countries have a highly developed network of cooperation at the national level, as well as research groups with substantial experience in helping draft research agendas and national priorities. Countries in the Widening group, such as Poland, have much fewer resources and less experience. Now is the time to change that. “Our ambition is to have our perspective, both social, national and scientific, included in the agenda, especially in those areas where we already have strong research teams”, Gębalska says.

The preparatory stage will last until the end of 2026 and the partnership will go into full swing in 2027-2034. The European Commission is to bankroll the partnership with c. EUR 60 million, and an additional EUR 60-90 million will come from the budgets of EU member states and associated countries.

The European Commission gave special support to the NCN in taking on the role of coordinator, in recognition of its earlier experience in managing programs such as CHANSE and QuantERA ERA-NET Cofund, funded from the Horizon 2020 framework programme. The NCN also won the support of the Polish Minister of Science and the Minister of Finance. The Minister of Finance agreed to shift resources in the NCN’s budget to create an STR partnership team inside the agency. The Minister of Science signed an official mandate for the NCN to coordinate the partnership.

What benefits will the NCN’s coordination of the partnership bring to Poland?

• the support of the HS community and an opportunity to promote and fund research that represent its strongest assets,
• access to financial resources for cooperation with stakeholders from various sectors,
• a chance to promote those research areas that address Polish research priorities but are also important for Polish society,
• the achievement of the priorities of our region of Europe and the cooperation of the Widening Countries (EU13 + Greece and Portugal),
• a chance for the NCN to shape European HS research policy as well as its broader research funding policy,
• a stronger image of Poland as a science management leader at the European level,
• a close cooperation with the European Commission.

Two grants for research components have been awarded to the returning scientists under the Polish Returns NAWA programme. They will pursue their research in Gliwice and Krakow.

Dr Marcin Kamiński, an expert in immunometabolism, will return to Poland from the United States. Owing to funding granted by the National Science Centre under the Polish Returns NAWA programme, he will be able to carry out a Life Sciences project ( “Targeting mitochondrial utilization of glycerol to modulate lymphocyte activation and obesity-induced inflammation”) at the Silesian University of Technology.

A grant in Physical Sciences and Engineering will go to Dr inż. Patryk Lipka-Bartosik, physicist specialising in Quantum Information Technology. After his return from the University of Geneva, he will study quantum thermodynamics at the Jagiellonian University.

Ranking Lists: research components under Polish Returns NAWA 2023  

Ranking List No 6 in PDF format 

Polish Returns NAWA 2023 enabled Polish researchers who had conducted research abroad to continue their scientific work at Polish universities and research institutions. The research component covered by the programme is funded by the National Science Centre pursuant to an agreement between the two agencies. Research components can be carried out by returning scientists or project team identified in a proposal submitted to the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme.

The National Science Centre conducted a continuous call for proposals to fund research components in the project from the date the funding decision was issued by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) under the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme until the last proposal for a research component recommended for funding in the call was submitted to the NCN.

The latest results concern the final components recommended for funding under the Polish Returns NAWA 2023 programme. Proposals submitted to the NCN were only subject to an eligibility check.

Wiktor Lewandowski, Błażej Skrzypulec and Marcin Magierowski will deliver lectures in the “Science in the Center” series organised by the Copernicus Center and the NCN. The first session will be held on 20 November.

The first lectures in the “Science in the Center” series were given by NCN Award winners in 2020. To date, together with the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, we have produced twelve livestreams, which have had a total of more than 300K views.

The lectures are livestreamed on the YouTube channel of the Copernicus Center and later added to the “Science in the Center” playlist. Each session consists of a talk by the NCN Award winner and a moderated discussion, during which viewers can ask questions and make comments in the chat window.

Meetings with 2024 NCN Award winners will be held on three consecutive Wednesdays: 20 November, 27 November, and 4 December at 6 pm.

The first talk will be given by Wiktor Lewandowski, this year’s NCN Award winner for Physical Sciences and Engineering, who specialises in photonics and materials chemistry. Lewandowski won the 2024 NCN Award for his groundbreaking technique to produce chiral photonic nanomaterials.

A week later, we will meet Błażej Skrzypulec, who specialises in the philosophy of perception and, in particular, the structural aspects of sensory experience, non-visual perceptual modalities and multimodal perception. He won this year’s NCN Award in Arts, Humanities and Social Swciences for his achievements in the study of the structural aspects of perceptual experience.

Marcin Magierowski, specialised in multidisciplinary biomedical research, will give the last lecture in this year’s series. He won this year’s NCN Award in life sciences for his study of carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide as key signal transducers in the pathogenesis and pharmacology of gastrointestinal lesions. Magierowski will talk about “Beneficial and medicinal ‘poisons’: hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide as a biomedical discovery that transcends our current understanding of the nature of the human body”.

The ERC has settled the Synergy Grants call. 57 projects were selected to be implemented in 24 countries. The winning applicants include Prof. Adam Izdebski, Professor of Environmental History at the University of Warsaw and winner of NCN calls.

Prof. Adam Izdebski, fot. M. Kaźmierczak/Uniwersytet Warszawski Adam Izdebski is the Professor of Environmental History and Human Ecology at the University of Warsaw, winner of the FUGA and OPUS NCN calls. The ERC will fund the project under his leadership entitled “Understanding anew the role of pandemics in pre-industrial Europe (1300-1800 CE): history, natural science and machine learning.” “The aim of the project is to answer the question of why the same virus, the same bacterium, the same pathogen, produces completely different biological and social effects, depending on the context in which the epidemic takes place. The team, which will include geneticists, climatologists, archaeologists, historians, ecologists and machine learning specialists, will study more than 50 epidemics that Europe experienced between the Black Death and the invention of the smallpox vaccine, i.e. from the late Middle Ages to the early stages of industrialisation. For each of these outbreaks, we will try to examine ‘everything’ – not just their effects, but the whole context, from the weather to what people sang in churches during services and what headgear they wore. All of this vast knowledge will then be analysed using machine learning to create a model that will enable us to predict how various combined factors can influence the course of a pandemic. It is as much about clarifying the past as it is about creating a new theoretical basis that will be useful in preparing for future pandemics”, explains Prof. Adam Izdebski in a recording released by the University of Warsaw.

The project EUROpest will involve 10 institutions from across Europe and the United States, including four leading centres: University of Warsaw, University of Gießen, Georgetown University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The project will start in the middle of next year and will last six years.

Prof. Izdebski’s research funded by the NCN concerned the environmental history of Byzantium and Cracow.