The National Science Centre has published the list of Polish winners of the OPUS 24+ LAP call, who will carry out joint projects within bilateral agreements in collaboration with Swiss research institutions. One of them is Prof. Dorota Stępień from the JU Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science. The total amount of funding awarded to five winning projects amounts to nearly 9.2 million zlotys.
Together with the Swiss team led by Prof. Kuangyu Shi of the Technical University of Munich, Prof. Dorota Stępień will conduct multi-faceted research into high-throughput PET imaging by decoding multi-photon signals on long axial field-of-view PET using physics-guided artificial intelligence. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a molecular imaging modality widely applied in clinical practice; however, until now, due to certain methodological and equipment-related limitations no additional physiological measurements have been under clinical conditions. Recent advancements in PET detectors have significantly increased their measurement capacities. The research conducted by the Polish and Swiss researchers focuses on methodological development and verification of positronium images using a clinical PET scanner.
In the latest OPUS 24+LAP/Weave call, which concluded in May, the NCN received 1,921 proposals with a total budget of nearly 2.7 billion zlotys. Researchers could request funding for projects conducted without international partners, as well as bi- or trilateral LAP projects involving foreign cooperation or access to large international research equipment. The call was open to researchers at all career levels.
LAP is a new proposal evaluation standard adopted by European research-funding institutions, designed to facilitate the funding application process for international research teams and streamline proposal review.
OPUS LAP projects were reviewed at the same time and by the same expert teams as other OPUS proposals, but also underwent an additional evaluation that looked at the research record and the previous projects of the principal investigators in foreign partner teams. Experts also made sure that the contribution of all teams to the project is balanced and complementary.
More details available at the National Science Centre website.
