Results of the SHENG 1 call are in. Nearly PLN 36.4 m awarded to researchers

The results of the first edition of the SHENG call are now in. Funding was awarded to 30 projects to be conducted within the framework of Polish-Chinese cooperation.

The SHENG call was an opportunity to secure funding for Polish-Chinese basic research in the fields of life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, as well as selected disciplines of social sciences. Awarded projects will be carried out both in Poland and China and supervised by two principal investigators: one on the Chinese and the other on the Polish side. The Polish investigator must hold at least the title of doctor. The project should take 36 months to complete and the budget of its Polish section should be at least PLN 250,000.

"This was the first, pilot edition of SHENG in more than one sense. It was the first opportunity for Polish researchers to vie for such extensive funding for direct basic research cooperation with Chinese partners. Interestingly, proposals were evaluated in a two-track procedure, independently by the Polish and Chinese expert teams. The final list of qualified projects was drawn up after the two assessments were compared and reconciled", said Professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the National Science Centre.

250 proposals with a total budget of PLN 313,250,096 were submitted to SHENG 1. Because their quality was generally very high, the ranking list only includes projects that both agencies considered to be the best.

Financial support will go to 30 research projects, including one in the field of arts, humanities, and social sciences, seven in life sciences, and 22 more in physical sciences and engineering. The total budget of awarded grants amounts to PLN 36,377,384.

SHENG is organised by the National Science Centre (NCN) in cooperation with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). The proposals were evaluated in terms of their content and formal requirements in parallel at the NCN and the NSFC. The call was open to joint Polish-Chinese research proposals, and experts assessed their research value, the qualifications of the research team, as well as project feasibility and cost estimates.

The first projects qualified for funding under the SHENG call will be launched as early as in June 2019.

SHENG 1 ranking lists