CENTERA

CENTERA LABORATORIES (later called CENTERA), founded in September 2018, is a Research and Development (R&D) unit in Warsaw – Poland co-financed by national funds and the European Regional Development Fund. CENTERA is implemented under the program “International Research Agendas” (IRAP) of the Foundation for Polish Science. IRAP grants are the most prestigious projects on the landscape of Polish research and beneficiaries of special privileges. CENTERA is associated with the Polish Academy of Sciences (Institute of High Pressure Physics PAS) but has large autonomy and its own budget of about 40 million PLN for five years (around 10 million Euros), covering the EU level salaries of the researches and high-level instrumentation. The main objective of IRAP grants is to create modern and sustainable R&D units, which, after five years of funding, will be self-sufficient thanks to research projects and cooperation with Industry. Currently, CENTERA cooperates with experts from many countries and employs approximately 30 scientists from Poland, Pakistan, Iran, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Germany, and France. CENTERA Labs are located in the state-of-the-art technology center Cezamat that is owned by the Warsaw University of Technology. Based on the bilateral contracts with Polish and foreign R&D institutions, CENTERA has access to a world-class R&D ecosystem, that enables, among others: to make nanometric structures with dimensions as small as 10 nm on a lateral scale and a single atomic layer on a vertical scale. CENTERA’s one and a half year scientific activity has resulted, among others, in many high impact factor publications including two papers on breakthrough discoveries in the top world magazines “Nature Photonics” and “Physical Review X”, the conference papers, two submitted patent applications and next 3 in progress, and the award of PhD Aleksandra Krajewska in the competition “Innovator of Mazovia”.