Universities Start the New Academic Year with New Investments
Supercomputers, state-of-the-art labs, centres of technical sciences and aeronautical research – Polish universities continue to make investments that enable science and research at the highest world level.
The situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic does not hinder higher education institutions from making investment decisions. They establish ever new centres that will increase the attractiveness of the scientific and research facilities of Polish universities. Some HEIs will begin the new academic year with new infrastructure.
A supercomputer at the UKSW – for private and national entities
The Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw has just launched CATO supercomputer. It is designed to perform high performance computing, which will be employed in science as well as business. The Digital Science and Technology Centre, where the supercomputer is located, will carry out projects based on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technologies. As the university assures, the task of the Centre will be to create transdisciplinary teams that will investigate social and humanist matters, and the new device will facilitate such research.
CATO, which was created in cooperation with IBM, is part of the UKSW’s digital technologies campus under construction in Dziekanów Leśny. The university’s authorities state that although the UKSW is associated chiefly with social studies and the humanities, there is a need to open up to new directions in research and development.
Centre for Regenerative Medicine WULS-SGGW to open this year
The works on a model centre of translational medicine, which enables the transfer of the results of studies on animals to human medicine, at Warsaw University of Life Sciences (WULS-SGGW) are about to close. The final, key stage is the opening of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine, which is planned before the end of this year.
The centre will host a complex of state-of-the-art laboratories and a hospital with experimental treatment for humans. It will enable cutting-edge research at the intersection of nanotechnology, tissue engineering and transplantology. This will facilitate gathering knowledge and making advances in treating lifestyle diseases and afflictions that pose the greatest risk to public health and cause the largest number of early deaths.
The centre will feature a unique operating theatre with an angiography system, equipped with an operating table that enables moving the patient for an MRI. According to the university, the centre will enhance its research potential in the field of biomedicine and will become one of the leading centres of its kind in Poland and in the world.
Launch of the construction of the Centre for Technical Sciences NCU and the Aviation Research Centre WUT
Next year, the construction of the Centre for Technical Sciences will commence at the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU). Financed from state budget, the centre will be a modern facility for technical studies at the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics. The investment worth PLN 22 million is supposed to set a new direction for the NCU.
In turn, in mid-September this year, a ceremony of signing and laying the foundation act of the Aviation Research Centre Laboratory of the Warsaw University of Technology took place at the WUT’s airport in Sieraków near Przasnysz. This is where research work will be carried out at the airfield.
The building of the Aviation Research Centre will be one of nine labs centred around the subjects of unmanned aerial platforms and light aviation. Their development is funded under a project financed from EU sources. The objective of the project is to enhance the R&D activity of the university and to expand commercialisation of research in cooperation with the local community.