The Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) has announced a list of the 100 most talented Polish scientists under the age of 30. The winners of the START 2025 competition will receive scholarships totaling over PLN 3 million.
725 applications were submitted for the 33rd edition of the competition. The winners were selected through a multi-stage competition, assessing the quality of their scientific achievements. Each of them will receive an annual scholarship of PLN 30,000.
According to the Foundation, among this year’s winners, the largest number of researchers represent the biological, medical, and earth sciences—30 scholarships. The University of Warsaw once again topped the ranking of institutions with the highest number of winners (15 scholarship recipients), followed by the Jagiellonian University (14 scholarship recipients) and the institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with 13 winners.
Since 2009, the Foundation has also awarded distinctions in the START program to candidates whose research achievements have been recognized as outstanding by the competition reviewers. The scholarships of these winners will be increased to PLN 38,000. This year, the awards went to: Jędrzej Chrzanowski (Medical University of Łódź, Faculty of Medicine) – natural and medical sciences, Jakub Zakrzewski, MA (Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Faculty of Chemistry) – chemical and material sciences, Sebastian Borówka (University of Warsaw, Center for New Technologies) – technical and exact sciences, Michalina Kowala (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Faculty of Law and Administration) – humanities and social sciences.
The START program also awards the Barbara Skarga Scholarship to a person whose research stands out for its bold crossing of boundaries between different disciplines, opening up new research perspectives and creating new values in science. This year’s winner was Alexandra Staniewska (Faculty of Anthropology and Cultural Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań).
Additionally, since 2015, the Foundation for Polish Science has been awarding the Prof. Adam Sobiczewski Award as part of the START program. It can be given to a laureate conducting scientific research in the field of mathematics, theoretical physics, or astronomy. The main award criterion is the exceptionally high quality of the candidate’s scientific achievements. This year, it was presented to Stanisław Kurdziałek (Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw).
In the 2025 edition of the START competition, the Prof. Wacław Szybalski Scholarship with Distinction was awarded for the fourth time. It was given to Paulina Kamińska (Faculty of Biology, University of Warsaw). The award recognizes outstanding young scientists conducting research in the fields of science pursued by the Founder, i.e., biotechnology, genetics, or molecular biology.
The scholarships in the 2025 START competition will be financed from the Foundation’s budget, 1.5% income tax contributions, and by private and institutional donors (TVN Foundation and the PKO Bank Polski Foundation).
The full list of winners is available on the Foundation for Polish Science website. Applications for the next competition will be accepted starting this fall.
