The National Science Centre to announce MAESTRO 10, HARMONIA 10 and SONATA BIS 8, and to pilot-launch the SHENG call

Ca. € 46.3 million: this is the sum of funding available under the new NCN calls for proposals to researchers who plan to establish new teams, carry out projects in international cooperation or launch innovative and groundbreaking efforts. Researchers planning joint Polish-Chinese projects will compete for more than € 9 million in total.

The SHENG call for Polish-Chinese research projects is a novelty in the Centre’s offer of funding programmes. An agreement establishing cooperation between the National Science Centre and the Chinese research-funding agency, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), was signed at the end of March in Beijing.

We hope that the Polish-Chinese programme will be as popular as previous bilateral NCN funding opportunities. The choice of partner is no coincidence. Entering into and developing a relationship with a country as active in economics and science as China, will certainly be fruitful for the Polish academic community, said Professor Zbigniew Błocki, director of the NCN.

Funding under the SHENG scheme will be available to projects in basic research, carried out under all panels of Physical Sciences and Engineering, as well as Life Sciences and selected panels of Art, Humanities and Social Sciences. Funding will be awarded to research carried out jointly by Polish and Chinese teams, and in which international cooperation is an essential component of the effort. The research should be conducted over 36 months, and both the Polish and the Chinese principal investigator may act as such only in one proposal submitted under the SHENG call. The principal investigator of the Polish team should hold a doctorate, and the budget of the Polish contribution should be no less than € 57,982.

Traditionally, June sees the launch of another SONATA BIS call, seeking to establish new research teams. Principal investigators under the scheme may be doctorate holders who have obtained their degree within 5 to 12 years of submitting their application to the call. Also, the researcher submitting the proposal is required to name between 3 and 10 published papers, the 3 most significant of which should be attached to the proposal. It will be noted that investigators in the project may not include researchers with habilitation or professorship other than the principal investigator. The budget of the 8^th edition of the call has been set at more than € 27.83 million.

MAESTRO is a call addressed to advanced researchers, who seek to conduct research surpassing the current state of the art. Principal investigators may recruit from scholars who, over the past 10 years, have published at least 5 papers in renowned Polish or foreign journals, have acted as principal investigators to at least two research projects carried out under nationwide or international calls and have been active in other fields of academic life. The MAESTRO call is being announced for the 10^th time, and its budget is nearly € 9.28 million.

It is also the 10^th round of the HARMONIA programme: the call for research projects carried out as international collaborations, non-co-funded from foreign resources. Eligible under the call is research carried out in direct cooperation with partners from research institutions overseas, under international programmes or initiatives launched as bi- or multilateral cooperation, and the research in which Polish teams use large-scale international infrastructure. The total funding in the call comes close to € 9.28 million.

The calls will be open until 17 September 2018, and the results will be announced by 15 March 2019.