Warsaw/ Washington Oct.1st 2015
Press release
Second Call Poland – U.S. Science Award
The Foundation for Polish Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest scientific organization in the world, are launching the second edition of the Poland–U.S. Science Award. The deadline to submit candidates is December 31, 2015.
The aim of the award is to strengthen and emphasize the benefits of cooperation between scientists in Poland and the United States. The award is presented to a pair of scientists — one working in Poland, the other in the USA — for their outstanding scientific achievements that are the result of their cooperation.
To be eligible for the award a scientist must be nominated. All active members of the Polish and American scientific community holding a doctoral degree, or working as researchers or research administrator at a university or other R&D institution (including the industrial sector) are eligible to nominate candidates for the Award. It is also permissible to self-nominate. The award can be presented in all realms of science, excluding the arts. The winners are selected by a jury composed of renowned members of the Polish and American scientific communities. The jury considers the opinions of leading experts when assessing the candidates. The award is in the sum of $5,000 for each laurate.
The first contest, which received 55 nominations, was completed in February, 2015. The winners of the first edition were Professor Mariusz Jaskólski from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan and Dr. Alexander Wlodawer from the National Cancer Institute in the USA. These two world-renowned scientist, who have worked together for close to 30 years, received the award for their structural studies on proteins of medical relevance, which have contributed to the development of new therapies to cure human diseases, such as AIDS or leukemia in children. The presentation of the Award took place at the AAAS headquarters in Washington on April, 2015.
“The first edition of the Polish-American Scientific Award resulted in great interest both in the Polish, as well as the American scientific community. We are very pleased that the community has reacted positively to our proposal, offering 55 very high level nominations, which resulted in the selection of these well-known scientists” explained Professor Maciej Zylicz, President of the Polish Science Foundation.
The Poland – U.S. Science Award was established in 2013 by The Foundation for Polish Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The results of the second edition will be announced in 2016. Because of the rotational nature of the award, the coming edition will be presented in Poland.
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The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org), Science Signaling (www.sciencesignaling.org), and a digital, open-access journal, Science Advances (www.scienceadvances.org). AAAS was founded in 1848 and includes nearly 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world. The non-profit AAAS (www.aaas.org) is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For the latest research news, log onto EurekAlert!, www.eurekalert.org, the premier science-news Web site, a service of AAAS. See www.aaas.org.
The Foundation for Polish Science was established in 1991. It is a non-governmental, non-political, non-profit institution based in Warsaw, Poland, with the mission of supporting science. It is the largest source of science funding in Poland outside of the state budget. The Foundation pays special attention to the transparency of its operations, regarding this as the foundation for building the society’s trust in the Foundation and in the entire NGO sector. Financial reporting of the Foundation is examined each year by renowned auditing firms. It publishes an extensive report on its operations every year in its Annual Report, available at FNP’s offices and on its website. The motto of FNP is: “Supporting the best, so that they can become even better”. www.fnp.org.pl
Media Contact: Caitlin Jennings, 202.326.6797
Awards Coordinator: Hend Ghobrial, 202.326.6655