Prof. Maciej Chorowski is the new head of the National Centre for Research and Development

His appointment as the new head of the institution was announced last Friday at a press conference at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Warsaw.

"What should be emphasised and reinforced right now is commercialisation" - said Prof. Maciej Chorowski from Wroclaw University of Technology. In his view, the success will be not precise settlement of a project, but its successful capitalization. "If I were to give a single parameter, which we - in agreement with the Prime Minister - would like to use to measure the effectiveness of the resources allocated to research and development aimed at implementation - we would like them to result in a significant increase in the capitalization of the Polish economy" - said the new director of the National Centre for Research and Development.

Minister of Science and Higher Education Jarosław Gowin, who attended the press conference on Friday, reminded that in previous years Poland spent billions on the development of innovation and at the same time fell into the lowest category in Europe in the innovation ranking. Therefore, a key element of the Plan for Responsible Development (the so-called Morawiecki plan) is the transformation of the Polish economy from imitative to innovative one.

"The task and the greatest challenge for both the National Centre for Research and Development and the Ministry of Science, and above all for scholars and entrepreneurs, will be building a bridge between science and business, which will allow us to cross the +valley of death+, which extends between research and implementations" - said the minister.

In his view, the National Centre for Research and Development is one of the most important institutions that will play a role in this process.

Gowin explained that a part of the Morawiecki plan will be to identify those areas of the economy that have the greatest potential for development. "The role of the Centre, headed by Prof. Chorowski, will be to direct the appropriate flow of funds to areas of research that are correlated with the priority economic areas" - he said.

"I am convinced that thanks to the Centre\'s activity under new management, and above all, its inclusion in a conscious, well thought, planned industrial policy, the +valley of death+ will cease to haunt Polish scientists and Polish entrepreneurs" - said Gowin.

Prof. Maciej Chorowski is Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Wroclaw University of Technology and the President of Wrocław Technology Park. In 1990 he received a doctoral degree in Engineering Physics. Nine years later he received his habilitation for his dissertation in the field of refrigeration and cryogenic technology.

Prof. Chorowski participated in R&D projects at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva, and in designing the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the world\'s largest particle accelerator. Chorowski is the Polish Industrial Liaison Officer at CERN, and the initiator of transfer of production technology of components of gas detectors from CERN to the Polish industry. Professor\'s achievements include more than 90 published papers in the field of cryogenics, applied superconductivity and new technologies in the energy sector.

The new director was selected in a competition under the Law on the National Centre for Research and Development and Regulation of the Minister of Science of 29 September 2010 on competitions for the positions of Director and Deputy Director of the National Centre for Research and Development.

From January 1, 2011, Prof. Jan Krzysztof Kurzydłowski was Director of the National Centre for Research and Development held. He submitted his resignation in January 2016. Until the appointment of his successor, the Minister of Science entrusted managing the Centre to the hitherto deputy director, Prof. Jerzy Kątcki.

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

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