NAWA Urgency Grants enables scientists to finance the entire logistics surrounding scientific work and to get to the research site swiftly. ‘There has never been anything like this in Poland before,’ says Prof. Mateusz Strzelecki.
NAWA: Why do scientists need a programme like NAWA Urgency Grants as a funding mechanism?
Prof. Mateusz Strzelecki, University of Wrocław, NAWA expert: No such financing mechanism has been present in Poland until now. By introducing this programme, NAWA is following the example of well functioning models in Western European countries. As a geographer, that is a representative of Earth sciences, I am familiar with this funding mechanism from countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States. Such rapid response grants have been known there for years. Yet in the UK and the US, they are dedicated mainly to Earth sciences and studies on geohazards. They enable scientists to arrive on the site of a natural disaster, for instance a volcano eruption or an earthquake.
The programme that NAWA is offering scientists has a much wider range, as it covers also humanities, social sciences, biological sciences as well as medical and health sciences, which perfectly reflects the needs of our rapidly changing world. As the past year has shown, such sudden phenomena or events that need to be studied concern all academic disciplines. An example could be some events in our proximity – social protests in Belarus or the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has paralysed the world. In addition, we often hear of the intensification of sudden phenomena related to climate change, such as floods, massive landslides, permafrost thawing or faster ice calving. The Pantanal is burning in Brazil, civil unrest is simmering in the US in connection with the presidential election, a new war may erupt in the ruined Lebanon – the modern world mounts challenges to science with a previously unknown force.
Who is this grant addressed to?
We could say that it is a Polish grant for the rapidly changing world. In fact, the choice of the scientist who obtains funding depends chiefly on the nature of the phenomenon that they want to study, i.e. it depends on the changing world. There are no limits as to the age of the scientist or the discipline they represent. What matters are the scientific significance of the problem and the need to get on site and study the problem fast.
It is thus a grant for all scientists who know that an event, a process or a situation in the world requires that a Polish team in collaboration with a scientific team abroad, where the phenomenon has occurred, appear on site as soon as possible in order to study the process, collect the data, describe the event before its traces or its exact course are covered up, blurred or distorted.
From the perspective of a scientist, how necessary is such organisational support for research?
NAWA Urgency Grant enables scientists to finance the entire logistics surrounding scientific work and to get to the research site swiftly. Standard grants do not make it possible, because one has to wait at least several months from the moment of submitting the application. In the case of the NAWA grant, a team which presents a good project will be able to get to the epicentre of the events within a month or two. This makes a considerable difference, because it enables researchers to be where and when they should be in order to study a given problem. There has never been anything like this in Poland before. NAWA Urgency Grant makes it possible to carry out those first studies, which may become crucial in applying for further research grants. This is why we could call this NAWA grant a ‘logistics grant,’ because it provides the scientist or scientific team with logistics for those pilot studies: we arrive fast, we collect samples, we take photos, conduct interviews and complete other necessary activities, depending on the discipline. And then, with those observations and data, we return to our country, to the laboratory or university, and start to work on subsequent results and applications for grants from other agencies, such as the National Science Centre or the National Centre for Research and Development, or for international grants, e.g. from the ERC.
What phenomena from the area of your scientific interests are sudden phenomena of that kind?
In the polar regions, where I carry out my studies, extreme events that should be studied immediately are unfortunately ever more common. If I could offer advice to geologists or geomorphologists, I would take a look at the latest landslides that result from the thawing of permafrost in Northern Norway. No one expected that so many settlements along the Norwegian fjords are in danger of not only landslides, but also massive tsunami waves, which may appear when the landslip crashes into a fjord. When such a landslide takes place or when there are geomorphological indications that one might occur, it would be good to send there a team of scientists right away, so that they can prepare analyses and perhaps prepare the community to evacuate or indicate the places at risk.
Thank you for your time.
Prof. Mateusz Czesław Strzelecki works at the Institute of Geography and Regional Development at the Faculty of Earth Sciences and Environmental Management of the University of Wrocław. He is member of the Academy of Young Scientists of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded scholarship under NAWA’s Bekker Programme. He is also the initiator of the idea of Urgency Grants. He has worked as researcher in the UK, Norway and Germany. He is the head of Stanisław Baranowski Polar Station of the University of Wrocław in South Spitsbergen, leader of Polish research teams studying coastal evolution and paraglacial landscape transformation in High Arctic, and the youngest member of the Committee on Polar Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has carried out research on Svalbard, Greenland, Iceland and Scandinavian and Antarctic islands as well as in Canada. At the University of Wrocław, he has completed projects, among others, for the National Science Centre and the Foundation for Polish Science. His research interests include ascertaining how climate change transforms polar coasts and endangers human settlements in those especially sensitive areas and the social and economic change.
For more information see: https://uni.wroc.pl/dr-mateusz-strzelecki-w-leader-academy-for-poland-2020/.