New Materials, Drives and Protein-DNA Models. Gdańsk Tech Scientists with Competition Successes
PhD Eng. Adam Olszewski and PhD Eng. Dmytro Kondratenko qualified for the first phase of the LIDER UP program. Meanwhile, Dr. Aravind Selvaram Thirunavukarasu received PLN 609,390 in the SONATINA 10 competition of the National Science Centre.
PhD Eng. Adam Olszewski and PhD Eng. Dmytro Kondratenko qualified for the first phase of the LIDER UP program. Meanwhile, Dr. Aravind Selvaram Thirunavukarasu received PLN 609,390 in the SONATINA 10 competition of the National Science Centre.
100 young scientists from all over Poland qualified for the training and mentoring phase of the LIDER UP program. A total of 708 recruitment forms were submitted to the competition, of which 448 received positive substantive evaluations. Among the highest-rated candidates were Dr. Eng. Adam Olszewski from the Faculty of Chemistry and Dr. Eng. Dmytro Kondratenko from the Faculty of Electrical and Control Engineering.
Safer composites and a new drive system
Dr. Eng. Adam Olszewski qualified for the program with the project "FreeFromFlame, formaldehyde-free polymer-wood composites with increased fire resistance." His application ranked 58th on the list.
The scientist specializes in polymer technology and materials engineering. His research includes polyurethane-wood composites and the use of natural raw materials in polymeric materials. He also developed this topic in a project awarded in the PRELUDIUM 22 competition of the National Science Centre. In 2026, he was also among the laureates of the START program of the Foundation for Polish Science.
Dr. Eng. Dmytro Kondratenko’s project is titled "Multimotor drive system with a single voltage inverter and multiphase electric machines." His application ranked 27th in the ranking.
The researcher is affiliated with the Department of Electric Drive Automation and Energy Conversion. His work focuses on power electronics and drive systems with multiphase machines. As part of his doctoral dissertation, he developed a modulation method for a five-phase, three-level voltage inverter.
Dmytro Kondratenko scored 27 points, and Adam Olszewski 26 points. Both projects qualified for the first phase of the LIDER UP program.
From mentoring to funding
LIDER UP is a new edition of the program by the National Centre for Research and Development, which supports young scientists in independently conducting R&D projects and preparing them for implementation.
In the first phase, participants will undergo training and receive individual mentoring. After its completion, they will be able to apply for funding to carry out their projects. The maximum funding amount for a single project is PLN 2.5 million.
How a protein finds the right spot on DNA
Success was also achieved by Dr. Aravind Selvaram Thirunavukarasu from the Faculty of Chemistry. The National Science Centre awarded him PLN 609,390 to carry out the project "Predictive coarse-grained models for modeling protein-DNA complexes."
In a living cell, proteins continuously interact with DNA. They regulate gene expression, participate in copying genetic information, and repair genetic material damage. To do this, they must find the correct spot on a very long DNA molecule—sometimes a short sequence consisting of only a few base pairs among millions of others.
Accurately recreating this process in computer simulations is currently very challenging. Even small protein-DNA complexes can require many weeks of computation, and larger structures cannot be reliably analyzed using the most detailed models.
The aim of the project is to develop a more accurate and accessible method for modeling these interactions. The scientist intends to extend the Martini 3 model used in biomolecular simulations so that it better predicts whether a specific protein will bind to a particular DNA sequence and how strong that binding will be.
The model parameters will be developed based on data from around 100 diverse protein-DNA complexes. In cases where experimental structures are not available, predictions prepared with AlphaFold3 will also be used.
The project was selected for funding in the tenth edition of the SONATINA competition, aimed at researchers at the beginning of their career after obtaining a doctoral degree.
The outcome of the work will be an open-source toolkit accessible to other research teams. It will make it easier to model processes related to gene regulation, transcription factor activity, and DNA organization in the cell, without the need to prepare the entire model from scratch.
