Scholarships for outstanding young scientists | Gdańsk University of Technology

The Minister of Science awarded scholarships to a total of 228 outstanding young scientists, including 32 doctoral students, representing 53 scientific and artistic disciplines. In this group there were four people from Gdańsk University of Technology. The scholarship amounts to PLN 5,390 per month and is awarded for a period of 36 months.

Aleksandra Kuryłowicz-Cudowska, PhD, Eng., civil engineering, geodesy and transport, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering

She is an assistant professor at the Department of Strength of Materials at the FCEE. Her scientific activity is focused on experimental and numerical recognition of thermal phenomena in young concrete. In her research work to date, she has proven that it is possible to describe the development of concrete compressive strength as a function that takes into account the combined effects of time and temperature. Together with the team led by prof. Krzysztof Wilde, she developed a system for monitoring changes in the actual strength of hardening concrete in a structure, which was implemented during the construction of the largest span of the extradosed bridge in Europe. She has published 28 scientific articles to date, including 12 in journals from the JCR list. In 2021-2022, she was the head of the research project entitled "The influence of curing conditions on the development of concrete temperature - analysis of boundary conditions in an experimental and numerical approach", which was financed by the National Science Centre (NCN) as part of the MINIATURA competition.

Patrycja Makoś-Chełstowska, PhD, Eng., 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 focuses mainly on designing and obtaining new "green" sorption media from substances of natural origin, based on Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES). She uses the developed substances in separation techniques, such as extraction, absorption and adsorption, to separate pollutants from conventional fuels and biofuels, as well as raw materials for their production. She is currently conducting research within the SONATA project entitled "New biosorbents from waste materials modified with green solvents for purification of gaseous fuel streams", financed by the National Science Centre. As part of this research, she handles agro-food waste and transforms it into valuable biosorbents that are used to purify biogas streams. In order to gain unique properties, the obtained biosorbents are modified using DES. She was also a project leader in the MINIATURA project (NCN) and five projects financed by IDUB (Argentum, Technetium, Radium and Americium). Her scientific achievements include over 50 publications from the JCR list.

Szymon Dudziak, MSc, Eng., 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 purifying water from organic pollutants that are not susceptible to biodegradation. The primary goal of this approach is to try to understand the detailed interactions that occur at the photocatalyst-environment interface and, on this basis, to maximize the efficiency of the entire process. So far, he has managed to compare in detail the activities of selected planes of TiO₂, which is one of the most important photocatalysts known. By this he has shown in particular that the effect of a selected dopant within the same crystal phase on photocatalytic activity can be completely different, depending on the surface structure (publication in the prestigious "Applied Catalysis B: Environment and Energy"). He is the leader of the PRELUDIUM project. He is a co-author of 19 publications with a total IF of approximately 125. He conducts research at the Department of Process Engineering and Chemical Technology in the team of prof. Anna Zielińska-Jurek.

Krzysztof Pyrchla, MSc, Eng., Materials Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering

He graduated from the Faculty of Applied Physics and Mathematics with an engineering degree. Then he studied optoelectronics at the Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, where he obtained a master's degree. He conducts research on new sensory nanostructures, focusing primarily on phosphorene nanoribbons in the context of potential application in optical nanomechanical sensorics. While he was studying at the Doctoral School at Gdańsk University of Technology, he managed the Diamond Grant project devoted to the development of multiscale modeling of such structures, which will allow for their effective design. He was also a scholarship holder in the QUNNA project, within which 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. In order to investigate the possibilities of using nonlinear light scattering (Hyper–Rayleigh scattering) on phosphorene nanostructures, he completed internships in the group 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 Robert Bogdanowicz, PhD, DSc, Eng., professor at Gdańsk Tech.