Contents presented in this article are preliminary information about the Virtual Research Institute (Polish: Wirtualny Instytut Badawczy – WIB) and are intended for potential Applicants to familiarize themselves with the Open Competion being prepared as early as possible.

In connection with the above, ŁUKASIEWICZ – PORT clearly informs that the presented responses cannot constitute the basis for formulating subsequent claims against ŁUKASIEWICZ – PORT as the Managing Entity.

The programme defines the following direct beneficiaries of the Virtual Research Institute:

Applicant – a research unit – an entity which must employ the leader of the research team and alternatively, other members of the key and auxiliary team.

Other units – research units – entities employing other members of the key and auxiliary team being the members of a consortium coordinated by the applicant.

Research team – a group of scientists consisting of the key personnel (the leader, members of the key personnel) and support personnel – employed by the applicant and other entities – if the research task is to be performed in the form of a consortium.

The programme provides the opportunity for establishing research units within the consortium where the applicant representing all members of the consortium employs the leader. The consortium agreement must be signed prior to application submission, and guidelines concerning its scope will be given in the call documentation.

APPLICANT AND OTHER ENTITIES

The applicants may be recruited from among the entities set out in Art. 11 of the Act of 4 April 2019 on supporting research activity from the Polish Science Fund (Journal of Laws of 6 May 2019, item 823) with reference to Art. 7 (1) points 3–6 and 8 of the Act of 20 July 2018 – Law on Higher Education and Science (Journal of Laws of 30 August 2018, item 1668, as amended), i.e.:

• universities,
• the Polish Academy of Sciences,
• scientific institutions of the Polish Academy of Sciences,
• research institutes,
• international scientific institutions established under separate laws and operating on the territory of the Republic of Poland,
• other entities conducting mainly research activities in an independent and continuous manner.

Other research units may be all units from the catalog of entities admissible for the Applicant, as well as other legal persons or organizational units without legal personality, which are not the Applicant, and which employ at least one person who is part of the research team.

All entities directly participating in the research task have to be based in the territory of the Republic of Poland.

RESEARCH TEAM–KEY PERSONNEL

• Leader – a person with recognised scientific achievements, supervising the research activity of the research team. The leader should have at least a doctoral degree in any of the disciplines in the following fields:
  • medical and health sciences, or
  • engineering and technical sciences, or
  • exact and natural sciences.

At the stage of evaluation of the application, the leader will be evaluated in terms of the present scientific achievements, experience in the management of the national and international tasks and research teams, awards given by the scientific circles, the number and quality of the initiated procedures for the protection of the produced or co-produced intellectual property and the level of involvement in the processes of commercialisation of the developed new products, technologies, etc.

• Members of the key personnel – it is a group of persons named in the application form, characterised by experience and knowledge relevant in the context of the performance of the research task, including in the scope of commercialisation of research results.

The program assumes that apart from the person holding the position of the Leader, the composition of the key personnel team will also include at least two members. On the other hand, the program does not specify the maximum number of members of the research team, but it must be adequate to the scope and specificity of the planned activities in the research task.

The programme assumes the minimum level of involvement of individual positions occupied by research team members, i.e. min. 0.7 FTE for the leader and min. 0.5 FTE for other members of the key personnel.

In addition, the programme assumes that research team members may participate in only one research task. This principle applies also at the stage of submission of applications for funding research teams.

RESEARCH TEAM – SUPPORT PERSONNEL

At the stage of submitting the application, providing the names and surnames of support personnel is not required. Only working hours, positions and scope of activities planned to be entrusted under the research task need to be defined. The programme does not provide the minimum level of involvement of individual positions occupied by support personnel of the research team.

The funding agreement will allow for strictly defined cases in which research team members can be replaced in the period of performance of the research task. However, the Standards for recruitment of research team members, which will accompany the complete call documentation, must be obligatorily applied in this respect.