The doctoral thesis entitled 'Forecasting the risk of bankruptcy for companies in the construction industry using statistical classification methods' defended at the Faculty of Management of the University of Gdańsk by dr Tomasz Nowicki won the main prize in the doctoral thesis category in a competition organised by StatSoft Polska.

In the twenty-fifth edition of the competition organised by StatSoft Polska for the best doctoral and master's thesis prepared using the tools of statistics and data analysis contained in Statistica family programmes, the main prize in the doctoral thesis category went to dr Tomasz Nowicki. The thesis entitled 'Forecasting the risk of bankruptcy for companies in the construction industry using statistical classification methods' was defended at the Faculty of Management, University of Gdańsk. The thesis was supervised by the Vice-Dean for Science of the Faculty of Management UG, prof. Paweł Antonowicz from the Department of Business Economics.

‘It was with real pleasure that I received the information about the award for dr Tomasz Nowicki, who in his doctoral thesis conducted research on the development of new early warning models (forecasting economic and financial standing) of enterprises, which is extremely valuable for economic practice. His work was aimed at improving methods that allow us to react in advance to the potential threat of insolvency (bankruptcy) of entities. In management and quality sciences, but also in the discipline of economics and finance, there is still a research gap in this area. Indeed, we do not have such models dedicated to specific sectors, and dr Tomasz Nowicki has proposed innovative solutions dedicated to business entities operating in the broadly defined construction industry. The choice of this sector was, of course, not accidental, as we are constantly dealing with an above-average intensification of bankruptcy (and also restructuring) processes in this area,’ says prof. Paweł Antonowicz.

According to the rules of the competition, in addition to cash prizes for the winner and their supervisor, the prize for the University of Gdańsk's Faculty of Management promoting the thesis is closed training in Statistica - a basic course for a group of faculty members.

The competition aims to promote the authors of the best works using data analysis methods and to popularise modern analytical tools included in the Statistica family of programmes. In the 2023 edition, several dozen works from various fields of scientific research were submitted to the competition. The competition is held under the patronage of the Polish Statistical Association.

‘Mr Tomasz Nowicki is my fourth promoted doctor in the discipline of management and quality sciences; in his research, he undertook issues that are a kind of flagship of the Division of Enterprise Development and Restructuring, which is part of the structure of the Department of Business Economics of the Faculty of Management of UG I have the pleasure to lead. I found it extremely edifying and rewarding to work with Mr Tomasz. I have also had the pleasure of observing him as a lecturer at our Faculty. I would like to congratulate him very warmly once again on his wonderful award, all the more so because in the scientific community (but not only) its rank is very much appreciated. I hope that in the future we will still have the opportunity for scientific cooperation, research, or even commercialisation,’ adds the laureate's supervisor.