Minister’s Scholarships for Outstanding Young Scientists

The Minister of Science awarded scholarships to a total of 228 outstanding young scientists, including 32 PhD students, representing 53 scientific and artistic disciplines. Four individuals from Gdańsk Tech received scholarships. The scholarship amounts to PLN 5,390 per month and is awarded for a period of 36 months.

PhD Eng. Aleksandra Kuryłowicz-Cudowska, Civil Engineering, Geodesy and Transport, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering

She is an assistant professor at the Department of Strength of Materials at WILiŚ. Her scientific activity focuses on the experimental and numerical identification of thermal phenomena in young concrete. In her research work so far, she has demonstrated that it is possible to describe the development of compressive strength of concrete as a function considering the combined effects of time and temperature. Together with a team led by Prof. Krzysztof Wilde, she developed a system for monitoring changes in the real-time strength of hardening concrete in a structure, which was implemented during the construction of the largest extradosed bridge span in Europe. To date, she has authored 28 scientific articles, including 12 in journals listed in the JCR. In 2021-2022, she was the principal investigator of a research project entitled “The influence of curing conditions on the temperature development of concrete – analysis of boundary conditions in experimental and numerical terms,” funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) under the MINIATURA competition.

PhD Eng. Patrycja Makoś-Chełstowska, Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry

She is an assistant professor at the Department of Process Engineering and Chemical Technology at the Faculty of Chemistry. Her research primarily focuses on the design and development of new "green" sorption media derived from natural substances, based on Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES). The developed substances are used in separation techniques such as extraction, absorption, and adsorption to remove contaminants from conventional fuels and biofuels, as well as the raw materials used to produce them. Currently, she is conducting research under the SONATA project titled "New biosorbents from waste materials modified with green solvents for the purification of gas fuel streams," funded by the NCN. Within this research, she manages agro-food waste and transforms it into valuable biosorbents used to purify biogas streams. To impart unique properties, the obtained biosorbents are modified using DES. She has also served as the principal investigator for the MINIATURA project (NCN) and five projects funded by IDUB (Argentum, Technetium, Radium, and Americium). Her scientific output includes over 50 publications listed in the JCR.

MSc Eng. Szymon Dudziak, chemical sciences, Faculty of Chemistry

He conducts research focused on the design of photocatalytic materials based on the exposure of selected crystal planes to the reaction environment, mainly in the context of water purification from organic contaminants resistant to biological degradation. The primary goal of this approach is to try to understand the detailed interactions occurring at the photocatalyst-environment phase boundary and, on this basis, to maximize the efficiency of the entire process. So far, he has successfully compared the activities of selected TiO2 planes, one of the most important known photocatalysts, in detail, demonstrating in particular that the effect of a selected dopant within the same crystal phase on photocatalytic activity can vary significantly depending on the surface structure (publication in the prestigious journal “Applied Catalysis B: Environment and Energy”). He leads the PRELUDIUM project. He is co-author of 19 publications with a total IF of approximately 125. His research is carried out at the Department of Process Engineering and Chemical Technology in the team of Prof. Anna Zielińska-Jurek.

Master of Engineering Krzysztof Pyrchla, Materials Engineering, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics

He graduated from the Faculty of Technical Physics and Applied Mathematics with an engineering degree. He then studied optoelectronics at the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, where he obtained a master's degree. He conducts research on new sensor nanostructures, focusing primarily on phosphorene nanoribbons in the context of potential applications in optical nanomechanical sensing. While at the Doctoral School at Gdańsk Tech, he led a Diamond Grant project dedicated to developing multiscale modeling of these types of structures, which will enable their efficient design. He was also a scholarship holder in the QUNNA project, where he worked on ab initio simulations of the interaction of nanodiamonds with NV color centers with organic compounds and their effect on the fluorescence of these nanoparticles. To study the possibilities of using nonlinear light scattering (Hyper–Rayleigh scattering) on phosphorene nanostructures, he undertook internships in the groups led by Prof. Pierre-Francois Brevet (Institut Lumière Matière, Lyon1) and Prof. Thomas Buergi (Université de Genève). He conducts his research in the team of PhD DSc Eng. Robert Bogdanowicz, Prof. Gdańsk Tech.