In July 2022, six young scientists from WUST received scholarships from the Minister of Education and Science for their research and scientific achievements. Now two more researchers from our University have joined this group: Dr. Paweł Ksieniewicz (Faculty of Information and Communication Technology) and Dr. Andrzej Żak (Faculty of Chemistry).

Both of our scientists were awarded the scholarship after the appeals were considered positively. Thus, there are now eight young scientists who, starting from the academic year 2022/23, will receive support from the Ministry of Culture and Science in the amount of PLN 5,390 per month for three years.

The candidates for the scholarship were submitted by the end of December by university rectors, heads of institutes at the Polish Academy of Sciences, and heads of research institutes and international institutes. The achievements of the candidates were assessed by the ministerial team within particular disciplines of science and art.

The highest number of points were awarded for the authorship or co-authorship of a scientific monograph, a chapter in a scientific monograph or a scientific article, provided that they were published by a publishing house or published by a journal included in the ministerial list.

The first scholarship for our Faculty

Dr. Paweł Ksieniewicz (Department of Computer Systems and Networks)

Currently, he is the manager of the SWAROG project, in which he is developing a system that detects sources of intentional disinformation on the Internet. A member of Academia Iuvenum, personally the proud owner of two cats, which are well known to the participants of seminars conducted by Dr. Ksieniewicz.

Scientific interests of Dr. Paweł Ksieniewicz focus on recognition systems dedicated to the so-called difficult data, i.e. biased with a significant disturbance of the a priori probability of classes, multidimensional, or characterized by the variability of concepts over time.

The scholarship is intended to provide the laureate with additional research security. Dr. Ksieniewicz claims that he will use them to expand the pool of problems he faces in the current work of his team.

– The statement that "the world is full of data" has already grown to the level of a joke, which starts half of the works written in our field, but it is relatively rarely noticed that this data is often incomplete, heterogeneous and, above all, undescribed. Properly described data (in addition, signal data!) can be found, for example, in such databases devoted to biodiversity, as Xeno-canto or GBIF – comments Dr. Ksieniewicz.

The scientist expands on the topic, pointing to new research directions – carried out in the form of scientific relaxation.

– In the above databases, we have hours of recordings of wildlife, which allow you to achieve much more peace than the uncontrolled noise typical of the University. Therefore, as part of my scientific relaxation, I will probably deal with a less stressful subject than fake news, and I will devote myself to tracking birds based on their singing, screaming, squeaking and other noises – says the laureate.

Dr. Kniesiewicz definitely owes its success to his two cats. They actively support his research and participate in seminars – as confirmed by two photos sent by our distinguished researcher.

The second scholarship went to the Faculty of Chemistry

Dr. Andrzej Żak (Faculty of Chemistry)

Although he defended his doctoral dissertation in the discipline of Mechanics, his scientific interests concern the development and application of electron microscopy techniques. The most important research projects of Dr. Andrzej Żak concern the methods of dynamic photoreaction microscopy under light excitation and automatic analysis of microscopic images for the needs of materials engineering.

The laureate, however, is not limited to material research, but is also active in the field of imaging biological structures. He is involved in providing electron microscopy techniques to as wide a group of users as possible in both the WUST environment and the entire city of Wrocław. He is a member ofAcademia Iuvenum.