Dioscuri is an initiative by the Max Planck Society, Germany’s independent research institution, intended to establish Centres of Scientific Excellence in Central and Eastern Europe. The Centres will enable outstanding researchers to carry out research on world’s top level. The signing of the agreement between the MPG and the NCN on 4th July inaugurated the programme.
The plan provides for ten Dioscuri Centres to be established in Poland, with existing organisations acting as their host institutions. Each newly established Centre will cooperate with a German Mentor Institution, and its funding will be provided by the NCN from the resources contributed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The Centres will be established by outstanding scholars, selected in a series of international calls. The researchers and their respective scientific institutions will be able to compete for the opportunity in October 2017. The call will be concluded in 2018. In the pilot edition there will be up to three winners, thus to form first three Centres.
In the event of successful application under the Dioscuri opportunity, the research institution acting as host to the planned Centre will receive annually the equivalent of € 300,000 to spend exclusively on the Centre’s operations. As a deliberate measure, the remuneration for the Centre’s investigator is supposed to be at an internationally competitive level. The funding period is 5 years, and may be extended by further 5 years (on condition that it passes assessment and there is funding available).
Further Reading
- Press release National Science Centre (29.06.2017): Dioscuri: a Polish-German recipe for scientific excellence
- Nature (04.07.2017): Germany and Poland launch research ‘twinning’ effort
