Stanisław Lem European Research Prize

#LemPrize

Idea

Lem Prize has been established to commemorate the 100th birthday of the great Polish visionary and science fiction novelist, Stanisław Lem, awarded doctorate honoris causa of Wroclaw Tech in 1981.

The essential elements of Lem’s literary legacy: people, science, technology, progress, and future – are also the core elements defining the mission and aspirations of Wroclaw Tech.

Lem Prize is awarded annually to one young researcher whose creative work in science or engineering has potential for positive impact on the future of civilization increasingly filled with technology.

Stanisław Herman Lem

Lem (1921–2006) was a Polish writer of science fiction and essays on, inter alia, philosophy, futurology and literary criticism. Lem’s books have been translated into over 50 languages and have sold over 45 million copies. He is best known worldwide as the author of the novel Solaris (1961).

Lem’s science fiction works explore philosophical threads by speculating about technology, the nature of intelligence, the inability to communicate and understand alien intelligence, despair over human limitations and humanity’s place in the universe.

Candidates

The Lem Prize is addressed to young researchers (people under 40) studying or working in Europe or associated countries - regardless of nationality or origin.

Achievement

The Prize is awarded for a recent discovery or significant achievement in broadly understood fields of science and engineering, with strong elements of technology, interdisciplinarity, creativity and vision.

Selection

The Prize Committee includes distinguished scientists from abroad as well as professores magni and members of Academia Iuvenum of Wroclaw Tech.

Procedure

Nominations including the description of the discovery or achievement, relevant publications, and letters of recommendation must reach the Committee by 30 September 2023. The winner will be announced to the public on 15 November 2023, during the annual celebrations of Wroclaw Tech anniversary.

Reward

The winner receives a monetary reward equivalent to 100 000 PLN, certificate, and invitation to Wroclaw Tech anniversary festivities on 15 November. They will also be invited to visit Wroclaw Tech in the following year (all expenses covered) to present lecture to the open public, meet with Academia Iuvenum and student organizations at Wroclaw Tech.

International Prize Committee

Reimund Neugebauer was the President of the The Fraunhofer Society, the largest research organization in Europe, in the years 2012-2023.

Prof. Neugebauer is a Fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineering and a member of German Academy of Science and Engineering. From 2010 to 2011 he was the acting president of the German Academic Society for Production Engineering. Since 2014 he has been a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Prof. Neugebauer was appointed co-chair of the German federal government 's High-Tech Forum, the central advisory board for the development and implementation of Germany 's high-tech strategy. Since 2015, he has been serving as a member of the European Commission’s High-level Group of Personalities on Defence Research.

Ms. Katarzyna Kozłowska completed her master and doctoral degree in automation, electronics and electrical engineering at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology.

Since 2020, Dr Katarzyna Kozłowska has been the head of the Science Office, which is responsible for ensuring the proper course of scientific promotion procedures at the university and also supports academics in competitions for scientific awards and scholarships. Before, she was the head of the Center for Science and Economy Cooperation.

© Katrin Binner

Tanja Brühl is president of Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. Before joining TU Darmstadt, Tanja Brühl was professor of political science with a focus on international institutions and peace processes at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Tanja Brühl is active as a science manager: She served as vice president responsible for academic affairs at Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 2019, she is president of the University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering (Unite!) – an European University of nine partners from across Europe. Since 2022, Tanja Brühl is president of the Alliance of Leading Technical Universities in Germany (TU9), together with Professor Dr. Angela Ittel, President of TU Braunschweig. Since 2023, Tanja Brühl acts as co-chair of the Advisory Board on the German Federal Government’s Future Research and Innovation Strategy.

École polytechnique, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsGérard Albert Mourou is a French scientist and pioneer in the field of electrical engineering and lasers. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, along with Donna Strickland, for the invention of chirped pulse amplification, a technique later used to create ultrashort-pulse, very high-intensity (petawatt) laser pulses.

In 1994, Mourou and his team at the University of Michigan discovered that the balance between the self-focusing refraction (see Kerr effect) and self-attenuating diffraction by ionization and rarefaction of a laser beam of terawatt intensities in the atmosphere creates „filaments” which act as waveguides for the beam, thus preventing divergence.

Mourou has been director of the Laboratoire d’optique appliquée at the ENSTA from 2005 to 2009. He is a professor and member of Haut Collège at the École polytechnique and A. D. Moore Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan where he has taught for over 16 years. He was the founding director of the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan in 1990. He had previously led a research group on ultrafast sciences at Laboratoire d’optique appliquée of ENSTA and École polytechnique, after obtaining a PhD degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1973. He then went to the United States and became a professor at the University of Rochester in 1977, where he and his then student Donna Strickland produced their Nobel prize-winning work in the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the university. The pair co-invented chirped pulse amplification, a „method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses”. Strickland’s doctoral thesis was on „development of an ultra-bright laser and an application to multi-photon ionization”.

Robert-Jan Smits is the President of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Prior to this, he worked at the European Commission in the positions of Open Access Envoy (2018-2019) and Director-General of DG Research and Innovation (RTD) (2010-2018) where he was responsible for defining and implementing the EU policy and programmes in the field of research and innovation: Horizon 2020 (annual budget: 8 billion euro). Drs. Smits is also one of the architects of the successor programme Horizon Europe (annual budget: 10 billion euro).

Drs. Smits has received several recognitions and awards for his contribution to European science and innovation. He is an honorary member of Academia Europaea and of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen. He has degrees from Utrecht University in The Netherlands, Institut Universitaire d’Hautes Etudes Internationales in Switzerland and Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy in the United States of America.

Prof. Maciej Lewenstein conducts research in the field of quantum optics, physics of ultracold gases and quantum computing, which has a great impact in the scientific community. In his research work, he also deals with topics related to statistical physics and neural networks. He lectured, among others at Harvard University, at the Saclay Center for Nuclear Research, as well as at the University of Hannover. He is currently working at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona. Prof. Lewenstein is a member of Academia Europaea and a fellow of the American Physical Society. His scientific publications have been cited over 40 000 times (Hirsch index 100). He has twice won the ERC Advanced Grant and has also been awarded many prestigious awards for scientific activity, including award of the Foundation for Polish Science. He is included in the elite Clarivate list of world’s most Highly Cited Researchers.
Krzysztof Matyjaszewski is a Polish-American chemist. He is the J. C. Warner Professor of the Natural Sciences at the Carnegie Mellon University. Prof. Matyjaszewski is best known for the discovery of atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), a novel method of polymer synthesis that has revolutionized the way macromolecules are made. Prof. Matyjaszewski was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2006 for expanding the capabilities of controlled/living polymerizations and developing ATRP, a robust catalytic process for the radical polymerization of monomers. He is also a member of the European Academy of Sciences. His scientific publications have been cited over 100 000 times (Hirsch index 162). He is included in the elite Clarivate list of world’s most Highly Cited Researchers. In 2011 he was a co-winner of the prestigious Wolf Prize in Chemistry.

Physicist and professor at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests include information optics, holography, optical and hybrid information processing.

Prof. Katarzyna Chałasińska-Macukow was rector for two terms (from 2005 to 2012) and the first woman to hold this position in the history of the UW. In 2008-2012 she also headed the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland.

In 1970, she began working at the Institute of Physics of the Warsaw University of Technology, and from 1974 at the Institute of Experimental Physics. She received her PhD in 1979 and her postdoctoral degree in physics in 1988. She became an associate professor in 1992 and a full professor in 1997.

In 2009, she received an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), with which she has collaborated for twenty years. In 2013, she was also honoured with this title by the University of Transcarpathia in Ivano-Frankivsk. Madam Professor is a member of numerous scientific societies, including the Warsaw Scientific Society and the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE, USA). During the 2014-2017 term, she was president of the Polish Physical Society.

Professor Halina Kwaśnicka is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence at the Department of Artificial Intelligence of the Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. She led research projects on applying artificial intelligence methods in medicine, image analysis and natural language processing. She participated in EU projects and managed a Polish-Singapore research project. She is a member of the Program Council of the AI Tech project (invited by the Minister of Digital Affairs) which aims to conduct high-level graduate studies on Artificial Intelligence. She is also a member of the Steering Committee of the National Center for Research and Development – INFOSTRATEG Strategic Program. Professor Kwaśnicka was invited by the Editorial Board of the London Journal of Research in Science: Natural and Formal (LJRS) as an honorary Rosalind Member of London Journals Press. She also worked as an expert of the European Commission on the review of the project „TRUST-AI,” a Transparent, Reliable and Unbiased Smart Tool for AI.
Professor Antoni Szydło has a status of Professor Magnus at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology in the discipline civil engineering, geodesy and transport. He conducted research projects financed by the National Centre for Research and Development from the series: DILRAP-EUREKA E., GOSPOSTRATEG, TECHMATSTRATEG in terms of the implementation of innovative materials for road and airport construction. Prof. Antoni Szydło identifies parameters of road and airport surface models, their diagnostics and tests of materials of transport infrastructure facilities. He developed a method of testing airport surfaces. He was a member of the Central Commission for Degrees and Titles. He is a member of the Committee of Civil Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences, chairman of the Transport Engineering Section.
Prof. Aleksander Weron in his scientific work deals with stochastic processes and their application in various fields of science and industry. His most important scientific achievements include: extension of Nagy’s dilation theory to the class of operator functions in Banach spaces, characterization of ergodic properties for stable and infinitely divisible processes, proof of the equivalence of fractional Fokker-Planck equations and sub-coordinated diffusion processes, as well as the generalization of the Chinchin theorem for anomalous diffusion processes. Prof. Weron has lectured as a visiting professor at many foreign universities – in the USA, France, Switzerland, Finland, Japan and Australia. 30 years ago, he established the Center of Hugo Steinhaus, whose task is, among others organization and popularization of research in the field of stochastic methods used in science and technology.

 

Katarzyna Gwóźdź holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Quantum Technologies within the Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology in Wrocław University of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on investigating the physical properties of new materials, structures and devices used in photovoltaics, electronics, and optoelectronics. In 2020, she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation titled „Optimization of Si-ZnO solar cells” and obtained her PhD degree.
She further expanded her expertise through a research internship at the Institute of Applied Physics in Technische Universität Dresden, funded by the DAAD program. During this collaboration, she studied the defects in semiconductors using electrical methods.
 
Recently, in 2023, Katarzyna Gwóźdź was granted an NCN project to conduct research on pyro-phototronic photodetectors on elastic substrates in partnership with the University of Minho in Portugal.

Dr. Vishnu Suresh from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Wroclaw Tech is a young researcher working in the area of optimization and machine learning applications for power systems. He completed his yearlong research internship in the Centre for Research in Microgrids (CROM) in Aalborg University, Denmark and is experienced in managing a Miniatura project funded by the National Science Centre in Poland. His most recent research interest is concerned with uncertainty quantification of black box forecasting models. The core objective of his research is to aid the integration of renewable energy resources and promote sustainable development.

Dr. Adam Szukalski holds a Ph.D. in Technical Sciences with a specialization in Nonlinear Optics and Materials Engineering. He currently serves as an adiunkt at WUST, within the Faculty of Chemistry. Prior to this role, he completed a 2-year post-doctoral position at Pisa-NEST (National Enterprise for nanoScience and nanoTechnology), CNR-Instituto Nanoscienze, Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. His research primarily focuses on the interaction between light and matter, encompassing optical and nonlinear optical properties of various materials. He has authored approximately 45 papers in esteemed peer-reviewed international journals. Notably, he was honored with the prestigious Max Born prize presented by the President of Wroclaw city, and received grants from notable institutions (MEiN, FNP, NCN). Recently, he was granted the Bourses du Gouvernement Francais by the French Government for his contributions as a promising Polish young scientist.
Tomasz Lem, the son of Stanisław Lem, is a Polish translator of English-language literature. He graduated from the American International School in Vienna, then studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna, and graduated from Princeton University.

Winners

2021 Edition

Prof. Randall J. Platt, a researcher working at ETH Zürich and expert in genetic engineering.

2022 Edition

Prof. Samuel Stranks, a specialist in optoelectronics from the University of Cambridge.

2023 Edition

Prof. Ido Kaminer, experimental physicist form Technion Israel Institute of Technology

Founders and Partners 2023

pwr.edu.pl/en
#wroclawtech

Contact us

Katarzyna Kozłowska, PhD, Dsc, Eng
+48 71 320 20 47

Barbara Krupińska, Msc, Eng
+48 71 320 22 68, mob. +48 661 531 020

e-mail: lemprize@pwr.edu.pl