The National Science Centre to support cross-domain research worth almost € 7.7 million

In the recently concluded SYMFONIA 3 call for cross-domain research projects, six winners were named, with an aggregate funding of almost € 7.7 million.

There were 62 submissions sent in response to the SYMFONIA 3 call for proposals, of which the six best were selected by the Centre’s Expert Team. Under the SYMFONIA scheme it is a prerequisite that projects stand out for their excellence and boldness in pushing beyond the boundaries of disciplines, in other words to pursue research that is genuinely transdisciplinary and contributes to the creation of new values in science.

Three projects were given funding in excess of € 1.5 million each. The one with top financing, Air Pollution versus Autoimmunity: The Role of Multiphase Aqueous Inorganic Chemistry (APARIC), is led by professor Rudi van Eldik. The project will be carried out by a research consortium of Jagiellonian University’s Faculty of Chemistry, the Faculty of Medicine at Jagiellonian University Medical College and the Institute of Pharmacology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Only a slightly smaller grant was given to professor Stefan Chłopicki. The Principal Investigator and his team of researchers from Jagiellonian University, in search of organ specific mechanisms of liver steatosis and heart failure, will investigate pharmacotherapeutic mechanisms, stereoscopic signatures and nanomechanics of dysfunctional endothelium in both conditions. The third highest funding awarded will support the project titled: An Atlas of Brain Regulatory Regions and Regulatory Networks ­– a Novel Systems Biology Approach to the Pathogenesis of Selected Neurological Disorders, submitted by doctor Bartosz Wilczyński and his team of researchers from the University of Warsaw, the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Computer Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Funding in excess of € 1.3 million was awarded to researchers from the University of Silesia and Jagiellonian University. They will study the effect of physical processes and excipients on the properties of poorly water-soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients. The Principal Investigator of the project is professor Marian Paluch. Prof. Ewa Zuba-Surma and her team will receive almost € 1.18 million for their research project dealing with the optimization of biocompatible scaffolds combining graphen and defined stem cell populations for tissue regeneration. The research team comprises scholars from the Faculty of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Biotechnology of Jagiellonian University and the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology. Funding worth ca. € 0.8 million will be granted to the team of professor Zbigniew Leśnikowski. Researchers from the Institute of Medical Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute-Centre for Molecular and Macromolecular Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences will work on the project Composites of Nucleic Acids and Oligofunctionalized Boron Clusters as New Material for Bionanotechnology.

The call was open to research projects which involved the creation of new full-time jobs for researchers with a doctorate, and the employment of at least four PhD candidates. The projects may last between 3 and 5 years, and the total sum applied for must be between € 470,000 and € 1,650,000.