Dr. Łukasz Kurpaska, dr Lech Raczyński and dr. Tolga Altinoluk are three researchers from the National Centre for Nuclear Research, who will receive over the next three years, the Minister of Science and Higher Education scholarship for outstanding young scientists. Last week, NCBJ signed a contract with the Ministry to transfer funds to the scholarship recipients. Tomorrow, appropriate agreements will be signed with them. Our scientists were in a group of 209 people who were awarded the scholarship in the last year's competition. Among the institutions, from which young scientists were honored with the scholarship are the Faculty of Chemistry at the Gdańsk University of Technology (5 scholarships) and the Faculty of Philology at the University of Wrocław (4 scholarships). NCBJ was in the group of ten institutions with three scholarship recipients - as the only unit conducting research in the field of physics. We are also the only institution within 12 other with R&D status - the remaining are university faculties and an international biological institute located in Poland.

Awarded scientists from NCBJ conduct both applied and basic research. Their results are used both in analysis of the largest experiments exploring the laws of nature, as well in practical, industrial and medical applications.

Dr. eng. Łukasz Kurpaska is a graduate of AGH, and he received his PhD in France at the Université de Technologie de Compiègne; at NCBJ he is an adjunct professor and he leads the Materials Testing Laboratory. In his research, Dr. Kurpaska studies the influence of operational factors such as temperature, radiation or pressure on mechanical and structural properties of materials intended to function in high temperature conditions. Reviewers of his scholarship application recognized Dr Kurpaski’s distinctive contribution to the development of materials engineering, as evidenced by a wide range of publications in the highest ranking scientific journals, by participation in research projects and by many expert opinions provided by him for industry sector, both domestic and international.

Dr. eng. Lech Raczyński is a graduate of the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology at the Warsaw University of Technology, where he also received his PhD with distinction. At the NCBJ, Dr. Raczyński is an adjunct professor at the Laboratory for Information Technology in the Department of Complex Systems. His research focuses on practical and theoretical aspects of data processing and analysis. During the last few years, the subject of his research has been related to data analysis in medical applications. Dr. Raczyński is a co-creator of a J-PET tomograph - a new generation device collecting data using plastic scintillation detectors. Dr. Raczyński's interests are focused on development of image reconstruction methods in this type devices, in particular on a possibility of effective use of information about flight time of gamma quanta emitted in a body of an examined patient.

Dr. Tolga Altinoluk began his academic education at the Technical University of Ankara and he obtained his master's degree (M.S.) and PhD at the University of Connecticut. He held scientific internships in Portugal, Spain and France. For over a year now he has been an adjunct professor at the NCBJ at the Theoretical Physics Division in the Fundamental Research Department. He studies theoretical collisions of atomic nuclei at very high energies - such as those achieved in the largest particle accelerators or in extreme environments occurring in the early stages of the Universe evolution. Atomic nuclei are objects composed from protons and neutrons, which in turn are built from quarks and gluons transferring a strong interaction between each other. Description of the collision of such complex objects encounters numerous theoretical and practical problems. In particular, we deal with non-linear phenomena, manifesting, among others, that as collision energy increases, other effects and description elements gain decisive significance. One of these effects - the effect of gluons saturation - is the main focus of Dr. Altinoluk research.

Scholarships for outstanding scientists are awarded annually by the Minister of Science and Higher Education. Each scholarship recipient receives for three years a monthly stipend of 5390 PLN. In 2017, 1159 scientists applied for the scholarship. Application evaluation included their work, significance of the carried-out research, international cooperation and other achievements. In order to qualify, it was necessary to obtain 98 out of 100 possible points, so the criteria were extremely high. Therefore even greater appreciation should be given to the distinguished colleagues, who were awarded the scholarship.