Official start of Top 500 Innovators program

Monday the 17th of Oct. the Top 500 program has been finally launched.

FOTO: Daniel Prusak (c)

Do you recognize the people in the front row??? ;)

We have been welcome with short speeches given by:

• Paul Marca - Director Stanford Center for Professional Development (first to the right, front row),
• Stephen Monismith - Director Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
• Prof. Piotr Moncarz - Director of Top 500 Innovators program (third to the left),
• Tad Taube - Honorary Consul of The Republic of Poland (fourth to the left),
• Jerzy Orkiszewski - CEO US-Polish Trade Council (first to the right),
• Mark Chandler - vice Meyer of San Francisco (second to the right),

The guest of honor at the inauguration was Professor. Leszek Balcerowicz, who in a brief and interesting speech, emphasized the role of innovation in creating economic growth (the third to the right at the group photo). After the official part the Professor eagerly talked with participants of the program.

FOTO: Daniel Prusak (c)

FOTO: Daniel Prusak (c)

Professor Balcerowicz spoke about the Authority of the AGH University with high repute, and asked to send cordial greetings to Prof. Antoni Tajdus Rector of AGH.

Weronika T. Adrian, Sławomir Gruszczyński, Eliasz Kańtoch & Daniel Prusak

Stanford University

Stanford University was founded in 1891 by the Stanford family. The motivation for establishing the University was to help young talented people acquire knowledge. On Sunday, October 16, we had the opportunity to walk for the first time through the University area.

We were amazed by the richness and diversity of nature surrounding the university buildings. The atmosphere on campus is encouraging and inspires intensive research and comprehensive development. Students have many opportunities for active use of leisure time. There are sports facilities available such as swimming pools, gyms, a stadium, and tennis courts. There is a lot of information and notices of open lectures, student actions and cultural events everywhere. Interestingly, this information is not only posted on the notice boards, but also in prominent places on campus (in a form of banners), in elevators, and of course the Internet.

Stanford University is built in an interesting architectural style inspired by Italian architecture. The largest collection of Auguste Rodin works outside of Paris is located at the campus.

Encouraged by the interesting history and tradition of the University, we are ready for the challenges ahead!

Accomodation and first impression

We are pleased to announce that we have started our internship training program in the heart of Silicon Valley. We live in California in the town of Mountain View. As already mentioned, we are staying in very nice guest house, called Oakwood, surrounded by palm trees. Everyone here feels the unique atmosphere of new technologies and innovations.

The town in which we live is quite unusual. As GOOGLE has a headquarters here, we have free wireless Internet in the entire Mountain View.
 

We immediately started to work and carry out assigned tasks. An interesting one was to fill custom electronic questionnaires which we filled out individually. Based on our answers, they assessed our abilities to make decisions / face challenges / take responsibilities and perform appropriate functions in a group.

From the very beginning of our stay, the atmosphere is very motivating, and every next hour brings new interesting surprises.

Meeting with Prime Minister of Poland Donal Tusk and US Ambassador Lee Feinstein

We are already in California! First impressions are really cool. We have come to the heart of Silicon Valley. We live in very nice apartments with swimming pools, gym and tennis courts. Today we are going for a lunch and a short meeting with representatives of the university, and tomorrow we start training.

by Weronika T. Adrian, Sławomir Gruszczynski, Eliasz Kańtoch & Daniel Prusak

However, before we'll write more about the first observations of the stay at Stanford, we would like to share with you our impressions of the meetings which we will certainly remember for a long time. Both were held on October, 4th in Warsaw. Our group of 40 laureates met with the Prime Minister of Poland, Mr. Donald Tusk, and the U.S. Ambassador in Warsaw, Mr. Lee A. Feinstein. Both emphasized how important it is to connect the world of science and business. The atmosphere of the meetings was very, very friendly :) 

Read more about the meetings at:

• Chancellery of the Prime Minister Website
• US Embassy in Warsaw Website

Greetings!

Young scientists go to prestigious scholarschip to US

Four young scientists from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków are among the researchers who have come for a fellowship at the one of the best universities of the world - Stanford University!

40 Polish researchers and innovation managers have come for a two-month fellowship to the Stanford University. They have been chosen in the pilot edition of the "Top 500 Innovators - Science, Management, Commercialization" program, announced by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland. The main objective of the training program "Top 500 Innovators" is to raise qualification of the Polish R & D (research and development) personnel in the field of cooperation with the economy, management and commercialization of research results. As reported by the Ministry, 280 candidates applied to the program. After a formal evaluation, 106 people were qualified to the next stage - an interview. As a result of the interviews conducted in the Ministry, 40 participants have been selected. More information about the project is available here.

Four people from this group are young scientists of the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków. They are:

• Weronika T. Adrian, M.Sc. - Department of Automatics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics,
• Sławomir Gruszczyński, PhD - Department of Electronics, Faculty ofElectrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics,
• Eliasz Kańtoch, M.Sc. - Department of Automatics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Electronics,
• Daniel Prusak, PhD - Department of Robotics and Mechatronics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics. 

We cordially congratulate our young scientists and wish them a successful trip, which will inspire them to further interesting research and activities.

We are also pleased to announce that the four scientists will run a blog at http://agh2stanford.blogspot.com for the coming two months, in which they will describe their experience of studying at one of the best American universities. We invite you to keep track of the next entries and photos!

You can find the biographies and photos of our researchers in the tabs above. The photos have been taken by Matthew Wójtów from Kraków AGH Student Photographic Agency.

Weronika T. Adrian is working in the field of artificial intelligence, knowledge engineering and Semantic Web technology / Photo: Stanisław Malik

The scientific passion of Dr. Sławomir Gruszczyński is constructing microwaveradar equipment / Photo: Stanisław Malik

Dr. Daniel Prusak deals with constructing microrobots and piezoelectric microactuators / Photo: Stanisław Malik

Eliasz Kańtoch conducts research on the use of modern information technologies in medicine. Photo: Mateusz Wójtów / KSAF AGH