Foundation for Polish Science, a non-profit organization that carries out programs supporting researchers from all fields of science, has announced five new competitions for academics. The funding made available in these competitions totals 67 million PLN. This time, the competitions are open to researchers of all nationalities, provided that they will carry out their research in Poland.

The Foundation for Polish Science is the largest source of science funding in Poland outside of the state budget. The applications for five new competitions – First Team, Homing, Powroty (Reintegration), Team-Tech Core Facility, and Team-Tech Core Facility Plus – are open until 2^nd October 2017. All applicants are expected to have at least a Ph.D. degree.

The First Team competition is designed for scientists at an early stage of their career who plan to start their very first research team comprising of students and postgraduates. Grants of maximum 2 million PLN per team will be awarded to teams working on social or economic problems, for projects taking up to three years.

The Homing competition aims to draw scientists from all over the globe to Poland. It is addressed to researchers who have gained experience abroad and wish to continue their work in Poland. Similarly, the Powroty (Reintegration) competition is addressed to academics who wish to return to R&D projects after a break caused either by maternity leave or by employment in a different sector of the economy. These projects should take up to two years; the maximum investment granted by the programs is equal to 800k PLN per team.

The last two programs, Team-Tech Core Facility and Team-Tech Core Facility Plus, encourage young scientists to use the technology and advanced research equipment already available in Polish R&D institutions. Grants of up to 3.5 million PLN will be awarded to applicants who will be able to apply the existing equipment in their projects related to designing and developing research services. Total funding that can be obtained from these two competitions reaches 25 million PLN.