The National Science Centre awarded a Miniatura grant  to Dr. Tomasz Szandała from the Department of Computer Engineering. He is one of nine WUST scientists who have received it. Our university is thus, along with the Jagiellonian University, the leader in this year's edition of the program. Congratulations!

Our scientist received 30,588 PLN for the project "Demographically Annotated Image Dataset for Benchmarking Fairness in Deepfake Detection Using the Fair-FLIP Method."

The funds will be spent on conducting pilot studies into the fairness of deepfake detection. Many detectors perform well in detecting deepfakes, but they are not equally effective for all races, age groups, and genders. The aim of this project is to develop a large, open set of face images with rich demographic metadata and to evaluate a new method called Fairness-Oriented Final Layer Input Prioritising (Fair-FLIP).

– This method limits AI model biases without losing their effectiveness, and thus it contributes to improved equality of outcomes among different demographic groups,” explains Dr. Tomasz Szandała. “The project's results, including both data and analysis outcomes, will be made publicly available to support research on more ethical and transparent artificial intelligence – he adds.

Nine Miniatures for WUST

This is the ninth edition of the competition organized by the National Science Centre. This year's fourth round of the competition provided 150 projects with grants worth a total of 6 million PLN. And nine laureates come from Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Congratulations!

Our scientists will receive a total of over 350,000 PLN for their projects and scientific trips. In addition to Dr. Tomasz Szandała from our Faculty, the laureates also include:

• Dr. Aneta Tarczewska (Faculty of Chemistry),
• Dr. Magdalena Żuk (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering),
• Dr. Karol Kobiela (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering),
• Dr. Wojciech Stopyra (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering),
• Dr. Andrzej Gawlik (Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology),
• Dr. Paweł Noszczyk (Faculty of Civil Engineering),
• Dr. Milena Kiliszkiewicz (Faculty of Electronics, Photonics and Microsystems),
• Dr. Agnieszka Krakos (Faculty of Electronics, Photonics, and Microsystems).

The grants will be used to support preliminary research, queries, as well as research and consultation trips. The topic is not a limitation, but it must fall within the area of basic research.

In March 2025, Dr. Elżbieta Jasińska (Faculty of Management) was awarded a grant in the first round of this year's Miniatura 9 program. In June, she was joined by Dr. Martyna Zemlik (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering), Dr. Mirosław Gierczak (Faculty of Electronics, Photonics and Microsystems), Dr. Piotr Bortnowski (Faculty of Geoengineering, Mining and Geology), and Dr. Mariusz Michalczyk (Faculty of Chemistry). In July, more grants were awarded to Dr. Paweł Piszko and Dr. Kinga Żołnacz (both from the Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology).