Eight young researchers from our university have received this year's scholarships from the Minister of Education and Science. The award is granted to people demonstrating excellence in their scientific activity.

In assessing the achievements of young scientists, the ministerial experts were guided primarily by the quality of the scientific papers they have published, their choice of topics – important for the development of science, and the significance of their research to the chosen field of science or artistic discipline, as well as the social impact of their scientific output and activities.

Doctoral students or academic teachers who don’t hold a doctoral degree, as well as young PhD’s who haven’t completed seven years since obtaining their degree (taking into account any breaks in their scientific activity), were eligible to apply for the scholarship.

A total of 1,828 entries were submitted for this year's competition. Ultimately, the Minister of Education and Science awarded scholarships to 230 people (including 37 doctoral students) hailing from 51 scientific and artistic disciplines. All successful candidates will receive support amounting to 5,390 PLN per month, to be paid for three years.

Eight winners are from Wrocław Tech, including three of our PhD students:

 ADRIAN CHAJEC

Faculty of Civil Engineering
discipline: civil engineering, geodesy, and transport

He is passionate about civil engineering and seeks to broaden his knowledge mainly in areas related to building materials engineering. In his doctoral thesis, he analyses the possibilities of replacing part of the cement used for cement mixes with waste material to offset their enormous environmental impact.

He has also for some time been looking at combining his interest in cement mixes with modern methods of incremental manufacturing (3D printing) of cementitious composites.

AGNIESZKA CHOWANIEC-MICHALAK

doctoral student at the Faculty of Civil Engineering
discipline: civil engineering, geodesy, and transport

As part of the WOW research project, funded by the National Centre for Research and Development, she is testing the recyclability of waste granite powders. She is also the manager of a project she won in the Prelude competition of the National Centre for Science.

Her doctoral thesis entitled “Experimental evaluation of the basic properties of epoxy floors modified with selected waste mineral additives” looked at the modification of epoxy resins used as industrial floors. The dissertation analyses the effects of various mineral additives on the physical and mechanical properties of epoxy floors. epoksydowych.

MATEUSZ DYKSIK, PhD, Eng.

Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology
discipline: physical sciences

The topics of his research concern the properties of excitons in two-dimensional layered perovskites. Perovskites are an unusual group of materials whose properties contradict the experience gained from the study of classic semiconductor materials such as silicon, or III-V, II-VI, and III-N semiconductors.

Understanding exciton effects and the synergies between mechanical and electronic properties is necessary to fully exploit the potential of these materials, which will allow their efficient use for the development of the optoelectronic devices of the future, particularly in photovoltaic cells or light emitters.

To this end, he uses optical spectroscopy methods in strong magnetic fields. This approach makes it possible to study phenomena including the change in the effective mass of charge carriers under the influence of interactions with crystal lattice vibrations or phase transitions. The use of high magnetic fields enables the study of the exciton's subtle structure and the determination of its binding energy or size. The research conducted comprises a series of papers, with key findings published in the journals ACS Energy Letters, Science Advances, and Nature Communication.

 AGATA JASIOŁEK

doctoral student at the Faculty of Architecture
discipline: architecture and urban planning

In her doctoral thesis, she investigated the use of paper as a building material to create the building envelope (external walls), with a particular focus on its environmental impact. A lightweight building envelope is a popular architectural solution, but in most cases, the materials used are not environmentally friendly. The use of a natural raw material such as paper is a sustainable alternative.

The researcher pursued her PhD as part of the interdisciplinary project entitled “TECH – a mobile eco-friendly cardboard house”, which will culminate in the construction of a prototype housing unit. Moreover, she is involved in assessing the environmental impact of building materials by means of LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) analysis and plans to study the impact of methodological choices on its results in the future.

JAN KOCOŃ, PhD. ENG.

Faculty of Information Technology and Telecommunications
discipline: information technology and telecommunications

Dr. Kocoń is concerned with the development of artificial intelligence methods in the field of natural language processing. Most of his work relates to the development of personalised models based on deep neural networks for subjective tasks, such as recognising emotion, offensiveness, humour, overtones, and other features in text.

This research is oriented towards making artificial intelligence methods cater to the needs of a specific individual and taking into account the individual characteristics of the person and the context in which the text is being evaluated in the decision-making process. This work also has practical applications, as the CLARIN-PL project has produced services based on the models developed, which are used by researchers in the humanities and social sciences, as well as by companies involved in areas including media monitoring.

 TOMASZ SERAFIN

doctoral student at the Faculty of Management
discipline: management and quality sciences

His main area of research interest is the forecasting of electricity prices in short-term markets. The young researcher is currently working on this topic as a doctoral student and as a contractor on grant projects carried out at the Faculty of Management.

His research work mainly focuses on evaluating electricity price forecasts based not only on statistical measures but also on financial indicators such as the profit or risk of an energy company trading in short-term energy markets.

DIMITRIS SOTIROS, PhD

Faculty of Management
discipline: management and quality sciences

His research interests are mainly related to performance measurement. Dr. Sotiros is concerned with strengthening the theoretical foundations of the field and developing new application-oriented multifaceted decision-making methods that could support decision- makers.

RAFAŁ SZABLA, PhD. Eng.

Faculty of Chemistry
discipline: chemical sciences

Together with his team, he is investigating the origin of RNA and DNA on Earth, i.e. how these information polymers were able to form on the young Earth, and how they began to perform the first functions that made the protocells possible.

The main focus of the research is on simulations using quantum chemistry methods, computational chemistry, and, more recently, machine learning. The results correlate with the experimental results of the team’s collaborators at Harvard, the MRC LMB in Cambridge, LMU in Munich, and many other foreign institutions.