NCN and NCBR to intensify cooperation

On January 31st the National Science Centre (NCN) and the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) signed an agreement of cooperation with a view to harnessing the potential of Poland’s scientific community, so that achievements by Polish researchers can play an ever larger role in the country’s economic and social growth.

– In cooperation with the entire academic community, we have designed a reform that will unleash the full potential of the science work carried out in Poland, offering more opportunities for the results of the researchers’ work to be employed for Poland’s social and economic benefit. At the same time, we have already been using all means available to provide the best conditions for research, both basic and applied. The agreement signed today by the NCBR and the NCN is another step towards the improvement of the public funding mechanisms that benefit Polish science and the economy, said Jarosław Gowin, minister of science and higher education.

Where theory meets practice

The NCBR and the NCN are executive agencies for the Ministry of Science and Higher Education that address targets related to economic and social development using the results of research. The NCN’s mission is to support endeavours in basic research, i.e. experimental or theoretical work, whereas the NCBR’s task is to assist Polish research units and businesses in practical applications of their research. While the two agencies have already collaborated with each other, among others on the TANGO programme, the agreement signed on Wednesday will further stimulate the cooperation, thanks, in particular, to joint funding instruments and support in implementing common research projects.

Objectives of the TANGO programme

The TANGO programme builds a bridge towards linking basic research with applied and industrial research, thus generating new opportunities for the practical use of scientists’ results. It is free from thematic bias, which enables the operators to choose the best projects from various domains.

In the two TANGO funding opportunities concluded to date (editions in 2013 and 2015), 76 projects have received funding worth more than € 14.84 million. The programme’s third edition will be announced towards the end of March 2018. Its budget will exceed € 9.27 million, and the funding of up to € 46,385 will be available to research units, research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as universities and individual researchers. The funding may amount to 100 per cent of a project’s cost.

The programme will admit only proposals drawing on the results of research projects that have been under way for at least a year or ones that have been completed, and funded under one of the NCN’s own funding schemes: OPUS, PRELUDIUM, SONATINA, SONATA, SONATA BIS, HARMONIA, MAESTRO, SYMFONIA or POLONEZ.

This year’s edition of the call introduces a new feature, allowing for submissions on a continuous basis, starting from the publication of the call.

Projects supported

Owing to the ministerial agencies’ support, scientists carry out research into, among others, the following: the technology of printing organic electroluminescent diodes, the introduction of cryopreservation of sperm to programmes improving the farming of fish of the salmonidae family, the use of Adaptive Impact Absorption (AIA) for aviation and space engineering, the technology of biotisation for commercial ecological berry breeding, the introduction of the hydrological hazard early warning system HydroProg, the delta-type parallel manipulator with pneumatic artificial muscles, and the innovative technology of purifying aquatic environments. The cooperation of research units on the implementation and commercialisation of their results is among the chief objectives in the reform prepared by the Ministry, whose tenets have been presented by minister Jarosław Gowin in the Constitution for Science document.