International mobility provides an opportunity to conduct research in prestigious foreign centres, and also makes it possible to establish long-term cooperation with outstanding scientists from around the world.

Nearly 600 scholarship holders of previous editions of the Bekker NAWA programme have already benefited from this. From now on, the group of beneficiaries of one of the Agency’s flagship programmes can be joined by more scientists and doctoral candidates representing Polish HEIs.

“Bekker NAWA programme gives doctoral candidates and researchers from Polish academic and scientific institutions the opportunity to go away for a scholarship to the best foreign academic and research centres,” says dr Grażyna Żebrowska, Director General of NAWA. “It is a chance to cooperate with world-renowned authorities in a given field, to develop individual careers, but also to transfer good practices to home centres,” emphasizes dr Grażyna Żebrowska.

The programme offers the scholarship holders the opportunity to complete a post-doctoral internship or a portion of their doctoral training, to conduct research with distinguished scientists from abroad, to acquire materials for their research work, and to establish long-term relationships with foreign research teams. In the 2018–2021 edition, the beneficiaries implemented their projects in the best centres in the world, at the top of reputable rankings. The following institutions can be listed: California-Berkeley, California Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Columbia, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Chicago.

The call for applications in this year’s edition runs from 17 March to 10 May 2022. A new feature of the fifth edition is a special path for the scholarship holders of the second edition of the Wilhelmina Iwanowska Programme. This is due to the difficult epidemiological situation and the resulting reduced ability to implement projects that received funding in the 2019 call.

In addition to the scholarship, the beneficiaries will also receive a mobility allowance and a family allowance if the family participates in the scholarship stay.

Details of the call can be found in Announcement of the call for applications no. 13 dated 17 March 2022 (Polosh version) 

Applications must be submitted electronically only through the NAWA’s ICT system.

A webinar is planned for those interested in applying. We will keep you posted on the timing of the webinar, so please follow the NAWA website and social media profiles.

Why participate in the Bekker NAWA programme? That question is best answered by the programme’s scholarship holders!

Bekker NAWA scholarship holders explore space, literature, work on therapies to fight disease, and discover innovative materials. They publish in reputable journals and win prestigious awards such as ERC Starting Grants.

Dr Kamil Łuczaj

Assistant Professor at the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow, member of the Committee on Migration Research of the Polish Academy of Science

Bekker NAWA scholarship holder, 2019 edition. He pursued a project entitled: “The Polish scientist in Europe and America. Post-crisis perspectives” at the University of Cambridge, UK.

“My time at Cambridge has allowed me to greatly expand my social networks. I met many fantastic people there, both among the staff and doctoral candidates at the University of Cambridge and among the participants in my study. To date, I have discussed partial results of the research at several conferences and have published the first article on the topic. Several more are at different stages of the research pipeline: from waiting for reviews to data analysis. Due to the nature of the methods that I use, I work with hundreds of pages of transcripts that take time to analyze. So, I am sure that I will not run out of material for months, and maybe years to come. All the more so because during my stay in Cambridge I came across an issue that, in my opinion, requires a lot of sociological attention, and that has not been explored all that often by Polish scientists so far. Thanks to this stay, I have established relations with the American University of Illinois, where I am now researching diaries and memoirs left by migrant scholars of Polish origin,” says dr Kamil Łuczaj.

The interview with the scholarship holder in which he has told us about his project and the value of the scholarship will soon be published on our website.

Dr Magdalena Kusaczuk

Medical University of Bialystok

Bekker NAWA scholarship holder, 2020 edition. She pursued a project entitled: “Effects of cannabinoids on epigenetic modifications of brain glioma” at the Complutense University of Madrid.

“The internship stay has resulted in valuable international contacts and joint research initiatives. Joint publications, presentations at scientific conferences, and co-editing special issues in scientific journals are just a few of the benefits of the stay at the Complutense University of Madrid. The contacts that I have established make it possible to continuously exchange the ideas and observations with world-class scientists and plan further research and projects with a team of international renown,” says dr Magdalena Kusaczuk.

The interview with the scholarship holder in which she has told us about her project and the value of the scholarship will soon be published on our website.

Dr Marcin Górecki

Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences

Bekker NAWA scholarship holder, 2018 edition. He pursued a project entitled: “NanoCD: from chiral nanospots to circular dichroism (CD). Development of a versatile microsampling attachment for a regular CD spectropolarimeter” at the University of Pisa.

“A one-year research fellowship at the University of Pisa, in one of the most prestigious groups dedicated to the study of stereo-defined organic compounds, has so far resulted in several articles published in journals of international circulation (e.g. Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, Chemistry – A European Journal, Inorganic Chemistry, Frontiers in Chemistry). The results of this research were also presented at two international conferences (Italy: CD2019, France: Chirality2019), as well as at the Congress of the Polish Chemical Society (PTChem2021). The results of the project have inspired me to study them in more depth, including, as part of a grant application, in the SONATA competition of the National Science Centre (NCN), which I have been pursuing for over a year now. An additional added value to my stay in Tuscany was the development of my soft skills, especially as regards my language skills in Italian. Owing to my proficiency in this language, I could prepare, just before my return to Poland (the second half of December 2019), at the invitation of the Promotion and Internationalization Team of the Faculty of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, a short science film about my stay,” says dr Marcin Górecki

The full interview with the scholarship holder is available here (Polish version)