32 PhD students from the University of Gdańsk received funding for their research projects in the 5th edition of the UGrants-start competition. The programme is part of the Excellence Initiative - Research University (IDUB) at the University of Gdańsk. It is designed to support young scientists by funding preliminary research and preparatory activities to plan a research project and raise funds for its implementation.
In the 5th edition of the Small Grants Programme - UGrants, a call for proposals was held for the UGrants-start competition, which was exceptionally addressed only to doctoral students at the UG doctoral schools. The funding (up to PLN 15 000) is intended to provide support for publication in prestigious scientific journals or publishers.
‘The most important thing about UGrants is not the funding that PhD students receive, but the fact that they have thought through their research, written a plan and faced evaluation by an external expert. This is supposed to give them a foretaste of what they will face at the next stages of their scientific career,’ says UG Vice-Rector for Research prof. dr hab. Wiesław Laskowski about the programme .
In this year's edition of the competition, 103 applications were submitted. The competition committee, with the help of external experts, qualified 32 applications for funding totalling PLN 473 000.
‘The topic of my research project concerns transport accessibility in the context of spatial development of selected cities in the Central and Eastern European region. Three large cities - Łódź, Brno and Kaunas - will be analysed - their spatial development and urban transport systems in the years 2020-2025. Thanks to the grant funding, I will be able to conduct verification field research in the cities, which will add value to the scientific article that will result from the implementation of my research,' says mgr Martyna Sydorów from the Doctoral School at the Faculty of Social Sciences at UG, one of the winners of the competition. ‘Small grants are important for us doctoral students as they teach us how to construct an application (which is much easier to write than, for example, within the framework of NSC grants) and provide an incentive to develop our scientific interests. It is a source of funding without which various studies could not be fully carried out.’
‘My project concerns research and silver nanoparticles obtained by an environmentally friendly green synthesis method. The grant will allow me to assess their potential in combating bacterial viruses (bacteriophages). Among other things, the funds will allow me to purchase reagents to study the interaction of these nanoparticles with different types of bacteriophages, to analyse their cytotoxicity on eukaryotic cells and to assess their efficacy compared to commercially available silver nanoparticles,' explains mgr Patryk Strzelecki from the Doctoral School at the Department of Biology. ‘Such grants are extremely important as they allow research ideas to be tested at an early stage, giving young scientists the chance to develop their projects and gain experience in conducting research.’
Read more about the UGrants programme and the full list of winners: Small Grants Programme - UGrants | University of Gdańsk.