Three of our Master’s students have received the Minister of Science and Higher Education Scholarship for the 2025/2026 academic year

25 03 2026

Katarzyna Jarosińska, Michał Stanowski, and Wiktoria Szymanek have been awarded the Minister of Science and Higher Education Scholarship for the 2025/2026 academic year. This scholarship is granted to the best students representing almost all scientific and artistic disciplines (48 out of 55) for outstanding scientific, artistic, or sports achievements.

In this year’s edition, the scholarship was awarded to 402 students for outstanding scientific achievements, selected from 1,155 applications that met the competition requirements. The scholarship is a one-time award in the amount of PLN 17,000.

We warmly congratulate our scholarship recipients and invite you to learn more about their profiles.

Katarzyna Jarosińska is a second-year Master’s student in Biotechnology. Her scientific interests include ecotoxicology, environmental biology, micro- and nanoplastics, and the protection of aquatic ecosystems.

In her research, she studies the effects of coagulants used in lake restoration processes on the bioavailability and vertical distribution of micro- and nanoplastics in the water column. In her Master’s thesis, she analyses whether the surface application of polyaluminium chloride (PAX-18) and iron sulfate (PIX-123) can enhance the aggregation and sedimentation of micro- and nanoplastics, modify the chemical composition of water, and affect the preferred depth distribution and oxidative stress responses in Daphnia pulex.

She is carrying out her Master’s thesis under the supervision of Dr Piotr Maszczyk in the Department of Hydrobiology at the Institute of Ecology.

Katarzyna’s most important achievements include co-authoring the publication “Microplastic Passage through the Fish and Crayfish Digestive Tract Alters Particle Surface Properties” (Babkiewicz et al., 2025) and carrying out research tasks within the NCN OPUS project “The impact of microplastic on selected ecological interactions between aquatic organisms,” which may result in another scientific publication.

Michał Stanowski is a second-year Master’s student in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. His scientific interests include microbiology, bioinformatics, metagenomics, and environmental biotechnology.

In his research, he studies the background of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). In cooperation with the Military Institute of Medicine, he conducts bioinformatic analyses aimed at identifying microorganisms associated with the disease and characterising their genomes. At the same time, he investigates extremophilic proteins from Arctic regions by analysing metagenomes of microorganisms from extreme environments in search of genes encoding potentially useful proteins, which are then characterised in the laboratory.

He is currently carrying out two Master’s theses: one in Biotechnology under the supervision of Dr Takao Ishikawa, and one in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology under the supervision of Prof. Łukasz Dziewit, both at the Laboratory of Applied Microbial Ecology, Institute of Bioengineering.

Michał’s most important achievements include co-authoring a scientific publication on extremophilic proteins, winning a silver medal at the international iGEM competition, co-authoring a patent application in the field of biological wastewater treatment, and receiving the Rector’s scholarship every year for outstanding academic performance.

Outside science, Michał is the creator of one of the largest educational biology channels in Poland “Imago Biologia” on YouTube (www.youtube.com/@ImagoBiologia), which supports students preparing for the final secondary school exam and the Biology Olympiad. His passion is bicycle travelling – in this way, he has visited most countries of Southeast Asia and many European countries.

Wiktoria Szymanek is a second-year Master’s student in Biotechnology. Her scientific interests include molecular biology, immunology, virology, and epitranscriptomics.

In her research, she studies the mechanisms of viral double-stranded RNA recognition and the induction of immune responses in human cells as part of the NCN Sonata Bis project “Understanding how the viral epitranscriptome shapes the host immune response.” Earlier, she also took part in the HepaSwitch project, in which she worked on a proposal for a targeted therapy against hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) for the international synthetic biology competition iGEM. She is also a member of the Warsaw Biotechnology Association “Symbioza” and has presented the results of her work several times at the Symbioza and Genomica conferences.

She is carrying out her Master’s thesis under the supervision of Dr hab. Paweł Sikorski in the Laboratory of Epitranscriptomics at the Institute of Bioengineering.

Wiktoria’s most important achievements include co-authoring the publication “Effective recognition of double-stranded RNA does not require activation of cellular inflammation” in Science Advances, winning a silver medal with the HepaSwitch team in the iGEM competition, receiving both the Main Committee Award and the Audience Award for her presentation at Genomica 2025, as well as the Rector’s scholarship in the academic years 2023/2024 and 2024/2025.