Dr. Jan Kocoń from our Faculty and seven other young researchers from our University received this year's scholarships from the Minister of Education and Science. This is an award for people with outstanding scientific achievements.
When evaluating the achievements of young researchers, ministerial experts analysed primarily the quality of their scientific publications, the candidates' focus on topics important for the development of science and the importance of their research for their field of science and scientific or artistic discipline, as well as the social impact of their scientific achievements and scientific activity.
The scholarship is offered to doctoral students or academic teachers without a doctoral degree, as well as to young researchers who received their doctoral degree not later than 7 years prior to application (taking into account breaks in scientific activity).
A total of 1,828 applications were submitted in this year's edition. Ultimately, the Minister of Education and Science awarded scholarships to 230 people (including 37 PhD students) representing 51 scientific and artistic disciplines. All of them will receive support in the amount of PLN 5,390 per month for 3 years.
At WUST, there are eight winners, including three PhD students:
Dr. Jan Kocoń
Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, discipline of information and communication technology
He deals with the development of artificial intelligence methods in natural language processing. Most of his work concerns the development of personalized models based on deep neural networks for performing subjective tasks, such as scanning text to recognise emotions, offensiveness, humour, overtones, etc.
These studies lead artificial intelligence methods towards the needs of individual people and put emphasis on the individual characteristics of the person and on the context in which the text is evaluated in the decision-making process. These works also have practical applications, as the CLARIN-PL project includes services based on the developed models, which are used by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, as well as by companies dealing with, inter alia, media monitoring.
Adrian Chajec
Faculty of Civil Engineering, discipline of civil engineering, geodesy and transport
He is passionate about construction and focuses mainly on topics related to the engineering of building materials. In his doctoral thesis, he analyses the possibility of replacing part of cement in cement mixes with waste materials in order to offset their huge impact on natural environment.
For a long time, he has also analysed the combination of cement mixes with modern methods of additive manufacturing (3D printing) for the production of cement composites.
Agnieszka Chowaniec-Michalak
doctoral student at the Faculty of Civil Engineering, discipline of civil engineering, geodesy and transport
As part of the WOW research project, financed by the National Centre for Research and Development, she verifies the possibility of recycling waste granite flours. She also manages a project, which she obtained funding for in the Preludium competition of the National Science Centre.
In her doctoral thesis "Experimental evaluation of the basic properties of epoxy floors modified with selected waste mineral additives" she has been dealing with the modification of epoxy resins used as industrial floors. She analyses the influence of various mineral additives on the physical and mechanical properties of epoxy floors.
dr. Mateusz Dyksik
Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology discipline of physical sciences
His research focuses on the properties of excitons in two-dimensional layered perovskites, in particular in two-dimensional layered perovskites. They constitute an unusual group of materials whose properties contradict the experience gained in the study of classical semiconductor materials such as silicon or III-V, II-VI, III-N semiconductors.
The understanding of the exciton effects and of the synergy between mechanical and electronic properties is necessary to fully exploit the potential of these materials, which will allow their effective application in future optoelectronic devices, in particular in photovoltaic cells or light emitters.
In his research, he uses methods of optical spectroscopy in strong magnetic fields. Such an approach allows him to study, for example, the change of the effective mass of charge carriers in interaction with crystal lattice vibrations or phase transitions. The use of high magnetic fields also allows the study of the fine structure of the exciton and the determination of its binding energy or size. His research is described in a series of publications, with the most important results published in the journals ACS Energy Letters, Science Advances and Nature Communication.
Agata Jasiołek
PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture, discipline architecture and urban planning
As part of her doctoral thesis, she is dealing with paper as a building material to create the envelope (external walls) of the building, with particular emphasis on their impact on natural environment. Light envelope is a popular solution in architecture, but the materials used in it are usually not ecological. The use of a natural raw material, such as paper, is an alternative that complies with the principles of sustainable development.
She is pursuing her doctorate as part of the interdisciplinary project "TECH - Mobile eco-friendly cardboard house," which will end with the construction of a prototype residential unit. She also deals with the assessment of the impact of building materials on the natural environment through the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) analysis, and in the future she plans to study the impact of the assessment methodology on the results.
Tomasz Serafin
PhD student at the Faculty of Management, discipline of management and quality studies
In his research work, he focuses mainly on evaluating electricity price forecasts not only based on statistical measures, but also on financial indicators, such as profit or risk of an energy company trading on short-term energy markets.
Dr. Dimitris Sotiros
Faculty of Management, discipline of management and quality studies
His scientific interests are mainly related to the measurement of effectiveness. He is working on the theoretical foundations of this field and developing new, application-oriented multi-faceted decision-making methods that can support decision-makers.
Dr. Rafał Szabla
Faculty of Chemistry, discipline of chemical sciences
Together with his team, he studies the origin of RNA and DNA on Earth. He is interested in how these information polymers could be formed on the young Earth, and how they began to perform the first functions that enabled the emergence of protocells.
His team focuses primarily on simulations using quantum chemistry, computational chemistry and, recently, machine learning. Their results correlate with the experimental results of their colleagues at Harvard, MRC LMB in Cambridge, LMU in Munich and many other foreign institutions.
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