Poland's Integration into the Europe of Science

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© Rexfeatures/Sunset

Warsaw's famous Castle Saquare, in the reconstructed town.

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Though heir to an excellent and centuries-old scientific tradition, the Republic of Poland often saw its own scientists leave the country for foreign labs. Ignacy Domeyko, Marie Sklodowska-Curie, Antoni Zygmund, and countless others made a name for Polish science abroad, and helped strengthen the vast informal network of contacts that have always characterized Polish scientific cooperation. With Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 came new political will and resources currently helping formalize partnerships abroad and reinforce research structures at home.
Like many eastern European countries, Poland is now working on strengthening its economy and upgrading its infrastructures. Yet with 59,000 active researchers (40% of whom are women), and a long tradition of excellence in mathematics, astronomy, and engineering, the country is nevertheless a thriving member of the European Research Area.¹
To prepare for its entry into the EU, Poland took measures to modernize its research structures. A new state committee for research, the KBN, was created, and later turned into the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MSHE), an institution which now oversees the bulk of Polish research.
In 2005, the Polish government set research priorities in various sectors, including agriculture, health, alternative energies, and genomics, but also biotechnologies microtechnologies, robotics, and information and communication technologies. The government allots 0.66% of GDP to research and development, and the EU has committed a €6-10 billion investment in structural funds in the country over the next seven years. This should effectively double current resources for research.
With new funds flowing in, there is high hope that Polish students in science will opt to stay in Poland rather than work abroad. The number of university students has quadrupled in the years following the democratic transition of the 90s, reaching 1.8 million in 2003. These students have their pick of 125 higher education institutions, 17 of which are publicly funded universities, and about 20 technical institutes, evenly spread across the country. Together, they award about 5500 PhDs a year, triple the number it was ten years ago. Two thirds of the country’s researchers work within these universities, but the heart of Polish research remains the historic Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk-PAN). Created in 1952, this self-governing corporation of 500 eminent scientists and scholars oversees national research and employs 4500 researchers in 81 research institutes, almost all devoted to fundamental research.
Around PAN, a constellation of 200 specialized state institutes undertakes research in more industrial or applied areas such as mining, paper production, or waste management. Yet private sector research remains limited, barely accounting for 15% of the national research expenditure.
Since Poland’s accession to the EU, Polish researchers have been extremely present on the international scene. In fact, even prior to 2004, several Polish institutes were designated “Centers of Excellence” by the European Commission within FP5.² The label attests to their quality but also qualifies them for enough EU funding to truly compete with the best of European research. These centers include the Instytut Podstawowych Problemow Techniki (IPPT), which specializes in materials engineering and biomedical modeling; the high pressure physics laboratory UNIPRESS, internationally recognized for its work on biological nanomaterials and blue lasers; and the Nencki Institute for Experimental Biology, a leader in neurosciences.
France is Poland’s third scientific partner behind the US and Germany while Poland is CNRS’ most important partner in Central Europe. Joint publications with CNRS constitute 60% of Franco-Polish
co-publications and the friendship between their research teams is strengthened by numerous collaborative projects.
CNRS and PAN began collaborating in 1957 (see ZOOM). This cooperation has developed into a mutually beneficial relationship, one cemented by more than 300 exchange projects and 52 structured bilateral and multilateral programs since 1990. The partnership has produced numerous results in all scientific disciplines, most notably in nuclear physics, particle physics, and chemistry. Twenty-three joint publications have appeared in two of the most prestigious and selective journals, Nature and Science, in the last 20 years. More specific agreements between CNRS’ IN2P3³ and the Institute of Experimental physics of the University of Warsaw were later added in 1974, and renewed many times since. CNRS has also launched 52 cooperation programs of its own to structure this collaboration, in addition to its participation in the ongoing state-sponsored Franco-Polish cooperation program Polonium.⁴ These include six international programs for scientific cooperation (PICS: three-year projects between a CNRS lab and a partner abroad) that span the fields of engineering, nuclear physics, and social science. Among these are proposals for the installation of the ICARE detector in Warsaw, the study of solid-state spectroscopy and the mechanic and thermodynamic properties of materials, as well as the spin manipulation in semiconductor nanostructures.
Three Associated European Laboratories (LEA) have also successfully been set up with Poland. LEAs are “labs without walls” that associate several CNRS teams and a foreign partner over a period of four years. The first one specializes in the molecular and macromolecular chemistry of transition metals, the second in the study of nitride optoelectronic devices, and the third in new astrophysical theories.
Finally, ten multilateral research networks complete this partnership. These structures link public or private labs in two or more countries for a period of four years to facilitate mobility, information exchange,
and the organization of conferences and workshops. In this way, Poland contributes to a variety of research areas, including the study of the genome of paramecium, renewable energies, the development of cancer, atmospheric science in near-Earth space, and the history of present times.
All in all, the collaboration with CNRS is a strong indicator of Poland’s exemplary integration into the Europe of science, one that seems to be constantly gaining momentum.
Lucille Hagège