Archives: Projects

Barbara Uszczyńska-Ratajczaka: Mitochondrial dysfunctions can affect almost any part of our body, including the brain, nerves, muscles, heart, kidneys, eyes and pancreas. Many human diseases are related to their dysfunctions, including muscular dystrophy, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Luca Pietro Casacci: Efficient communication to coordinate the actions of up to a million specialised nestmates is fundamental to the success of social insects, especially ants, which represent some of the most sophisticated animal societies.

Agata Ignaciuk: Contraception and abortion are highly contentious topics in contemporary Poland. A close examination of how these issues were dealt with in the recent past sheds new light on the history of Polish state-socialism, the democratic transition and current debates on reproductive rights in Poland.

Izabela Czekaj: Nowadays, crude oil and natural gas are the main sources for the production of fuels and feedstock chemicals. These resources are limited and mankind urgently needs alternatives for a more sustainable production of chemicals from renewable feedstock (e.g. wood biomass). This is why I decided to join the search for novel porous nano-materials such as zeolites.

Łukasz Piątkowski: Mitochondria Porphyrins form an important, naturally occurring, yet not well-explored family of molecules. Various kinds of porphyrins take part in a multitude of biochemical processes, including those taking place in our body.

Michał Roman Szymański: Mitochondria are cellular power plants. We have hundreds to thousands of them in each cell. It is inside of mitochondria that the sugar and fat we eat are burned and generate energy used to create a compound – ATP.

Mikołaj Paweł Szołtysek: The ways contemporary European families are organised differ markedly, and it is likely that these variations have important consequences for the status of women, intergenerational relations and human capital formation. However, tracing the historical roots of these familial variations has never been successfully concluded.

Maciej Adam Pieróg: Nowadays, computer systems control almost every aspect of our lives. There is a constantly increasing demand for safety-critical software of growing complexity. To meet this demand, one needs appropriate tools, and at the very heart of softwaredevelopment toolchain lays a programming language in which one can describe the logic of the system.

Monika Kornacka: Each of us sometimes dwells on the same subject: Why does it always happen to me? What have I done to deserve that? Repetitive negative thinking is a natural way of regulating our emotions. However, under certain circumstances it might become maladaptive and increase the risk of psychological disorders.

Pasi Huovinen: We always say that the universe has its origin in the Big Bang, when everything was compressed into a point. But a universe-sized amount of matter compressed into a pinprick – what kind of stuff is that?