Press cuttings - Supporting the best
20.02.2003
THE FOUNDATION FOR POLISH SCIENCE (FNP) which entered the second decade of its operations last year is an independent, nongovernmental, non-profit institution which has allotted substantial finance to satisfy science's essential requirements, exceeding a total value of PLN 210 million.
The Foundation receives no support from the national budget, obtaining the funds it needs for its activities from the active investment of its assets in financial instruments. Though its statutory expenditure, which oscillates around an annual figure of over 20 million, may not seem all that imposing when compared with the annual sums assigned for science by the national budget, its effects are highly visible. The reason is that the Foundation's assistance goes exclusively to the best, in accordance with overall FNP's strategy: supporting only the best so that they can become even better.
The Foundation offers the science community more than 10 various forms of assistance every year, including various kinds of scholarships and also 3-year so-called professors subsidies, two publishing programmes as well as programmes allowing grants to be obtained for modernising scientific workshops or for technology transfers.
Among the Foundation's best known programmes is the Foundation Prizes annually awarded over past 11 years in four major fields of science to scholars for eminent achievements during the past four years. These are presented at an official event every December in the Royal Castle in Warsaw and are presently recognised as Poland's most important prize for science. The 39 winners of the FNP Prize so far include both outstanding older scholars and also relatively young scientists.
The competition for annual scholarships focused on young scientists is among the most esteemed FNP programmes, the list of winners already exceeding 1100 names. The most talented young Ph.D. scholars also enjoy the opportunity to win a FNP scholarship in world-renowned scientific centres which have been granted, so far, to more than 70 persons who can safely by classified among the young elite of Polish science today.
Over the past several years the Foundation has been increasingly active in supporting international scientific cooperation. It awards the Alexander von Humboldt Polish Honorary Research Fellowship for outstanding German scholars to pursue research in Poland, while Central and East European scientists can apply for a scholarship in Poland, sponsored by the FNP, through the Mianowski Fund. More than 200 foreign scientists have made avail of the Foundation's operations to come to Poland research.
Foundation address:
ul. Grażyny 11,
02-548 Warszawa,
Tel. (+48 22) 845-95-01,
Fax 845-95-05
E-mail: fnp@fnp.org.pl
www.fnp.org.pl