Dr Maurycy Żarczyński from the Faculty of Oceanography and Geography of the University of Gdańsk is among the winners of this year's edition of the Bekker NAWA scholarship programme, which provides an opportunity for a prestigious research internship. The young scientist will spend a year and a half doing palaeoclimatological research at Nothern Arizona University.

The aim of the programme is to support the international mobility of doctoral students, scientists and academic teachers in their pursuit of scientific excellence by enabling them to develop in foreign research and academic centres around the world.

Bekker NAWA is one of the flagship programmes of the National Agency for Academic Exchange. During their stays - lasting from 3 to 24 months - scholarship holders will carry out scientific projects or postdoctoral internships together with foreign scientists and develop international cooperation.

This year, 176 scholarship holders were selected from 507 candidates. Their projects will be implemented in more than 30 countries.

Dr Maurycy Żarczyński from the Institute of Geography is on the list of NAWA scholarship holders. During the internship, planned for a year and a half, he will carry out a project entitled 'Reconstruction of environmental changes in the glacial-interglacial cycle during the last 1.3 million years, recorded in the sediments of Lake Stoneman (Arizona, USA): a novel approach using hyperspectral imaging.'.

The internship will take place at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff (USA). The internship supervisor on the NAU side will be one of the leaders of international research in palaeoclimatology, prof. Darrell Kaufman.

In this year's edition of the NAWA Bekker Programme, the largest group of researchers will carry out projects in centres located in the United States of America (36 people), Germany (17 people), Spain (14 people) and Great Britain (13 people). Researchers will also go to centres in Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Japan, but also to Uruguay or Georgia.

Among the universities where the fellows will conduct their research, there are such prestigious universities as Oxford University, Columbia University, Stanford University, Tokyo University, Humboldt University in Berlin, New York University or Max Planck Institute.

The Bekker NAWA programme is open to researchers and PhD students representing all fields of science. Among this year's Scholars, the largest group are representatives of life sciences (71 people), followed by engineering and technology (40 people), social sciences (26 people), medical and health sciences (18 people), humanities (17 people) and agricultural sciences (4 people).