NCBR’s Annual Report 2020

Dear Readers,

Another year of NCBR’s functioning is behind us. It is common for us to say that we are facing unusual breakthrough times, but such words are often a figure of speech rather than a reality. However, behind us is a year that presented us all with some unexpected and unforeseeable challenges. When I was preparing the foreword to NCBR’s previous annual report, we had already been struggling with the outbreak of the pandemic. However, no one back then could accurately predict the forthcoming events. COVID-19 definitely changed our lives. On the one hand, we had to learn to function in a world in which human life and health were put at risk. On the other hand, our economy had to adapt to the circumstances, challenges and threats brought by the pandemic.

Already in the spring last year, NCBR organised its work in such a way that its activities could be successfully continued. Applicants and customers got perfectly accustomed to the panels, contacts and exchange of information mainly taking place in a remote manner. The new situation did not lower the applicants’ interest in the services NCBR offers. These extraordinary circumstances also made us support various attempts at controlling the pandemics. We launched special competitions as well as offered our support for dedicated COVID-19 hospitals. What was extremely important in those efforts was our prompt reaction and concrete response to the challenges we all had been forced to face.

The pandemic has not slowed down our activities and programmes. Nor did it hamper the ongoing work of our beneficiaries. Here you will find an extensive study on the projects completed in 2020. It can serve as a partial response to the question of what outcomes the support provided by NCBR has brought and how the invested money has fostered our beneficiaries’ work. Importantly, the word “our” does not refer to NCBR only but is intended to mean “all of us”. The funds at the executive agencies’ disposal – including our Centre – are, after all, not the property of any particular agency or person but a common capital for our future. We support those who can best use that money. This is quite a responsible task and we are fully mindful of that. Therefore, we are constantly advancing our project selection and implementation monitoring procedures. All this certainly bears fruit as is evidenced in the report. 

The year 2020 brought some significant changes at the Centre itself, which are presented in detail later in the report. We established the IDEAS company, which will conduct research and implementation work in the field of artificial intelligence. The National Contact Point (NCP), which now forms part of the International Cooperation Office, will support Polish innovators in applying to the new Horizon Europe programme. We expanded our activities in the field of developing and supporting eco-friendly solutions and creating the Green Deal. It was also the period of work on NCBR’s new operational strategy. The document preparation process was completed in December 2020, and at the start of 2021 it entered the implementation phase. It outlines our mission and vision, underlines the values we are guided by, and determines the objectives of our activities in a few-year perspective.

NCBR has been changing. You can find expert elaborations prepared at the Centre; we communicate with you more and more frequently via social media, and we are increasingly present on the forum of international cooperation. This text offers limited space for summarising in detail such an intensive year as 2020 was, but you will find a lot of interesting information further in the report. To conclude, I would like to make two important remarks. First of all, we would like the intensive cooperation that we have established with our partners, stakeholders and you to continue to develop dynamically, as this is the issue to which we really attach much importance. Second, what we manage to do at NCBR is indeed thanks to the people working here: outstanding specialists and experts. Without them our achievements would simply not be possible. Let me, therefore, end by expressing sincere gratitude to our partners for their cooperation and kindness, and to the Centre staff for their concerted efforts