University of Warsaw
Founded in 1816 the University of Warsaw (UW) is the largest and according to the latest Shanghai Ranking also the best higher education establishment in Poland – among the top 3% of the world’s best universities.
The total number of students exceeds 53 thousand. University of Warsaw recognizes doctoral studies as one of its priority activities and it pursues the aim of providing PhD students with the training of high quality and expanding its pool of PhD studies programmes offered in English. UW employs about 3.5 thousand teaching and research staff. Currently, the University has 21 faculties encompassing the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities and offers 37 fields of studies. There are 30 extra – departmental and inter- faculty centers and programmes.
The scientific profile of the University has been shaped by the structural, financial and organizational priorities aiming at promoting those research fields that are at the forefront
of European and world science, with the strategic objective of making the University competitive on the global scene. The University promotes interdisciplinary approaches – integrating research methods from diverse fields, and facilitates creation of multidisciplinary research teams able to tackle combined projects, exceeding the competences of individual departments or institutes. In accordance with the current research trends and in order to meet the most urgent social needs, the University promotes the development of technical specialisations (e.g. informatics, biotechnology and applied physics), social sciences, economics, modern languages and geosciences.
The multidisciplinary research centres at UW include the Centre of New Technologies, and DELAB – a research unit conducting interdisciplinary research on the transformation related to the development of information and communication technologies to the objective of effective application of new technologies in the economy and society in Poland and the Central and Eastern Europe. Particular consideration is given to: comprehensive strengthening of ICT application in the society and economy, improvement of adaptation and innovative capabilities of companies. UW Centre for Transfer of Technologies and Incubator support the development of innovative entrepreneurship, development of educational skills and solutions needed for the professions of the future, identification of the necessary structural reforms and institutional transformation as well as supporting the development of the respective public policies.
UW successfully competes for research grants at the EU level. University of Warsaw won 98 projects in FP7 including 1 ERC Advanced Grant, one REGPOT Project for over 4.5 million euro and three CIP Projects. In Program Horizon 2020 University of Warsaw has won so far over 50 grants of which 7 ERC Grants so far including three ERC Starting Grants, three ERC Consolidator Grants and ERC PoC grant, ITNs, RISE and IFs under MSCA.
Twinning will engage Faculty of Psychology at UW as well as the departments involved in Cognitive Sciences Programme. Faculty of Psychology staff, especially the coordinator of this project has a long history of interdisciplinary research and had PhDs and collaborators from: Venter for New Technologies, Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science.
State-of-the-art equipment (acquired recently by many departments) significantly facilitates research, expanding the scientific potential of the University. The faculty as well as the students enjoy now access to the most recent innovations in terms of research support, such as modern research laboratories with EEG and NIRS, computer networks, multimedia technologies and advanced computer programming in a broad spectrum of applications. UW and Faculty of Psychology has a steady collaboration with 2 centres equipped with fMRI.