12.11.2024The Witold Lipski Award was established in 2005 to commemorate the pioneer of Polish computer science whose scientific achievements continue to inspire subsequent generations of researchers. The annual competition is addressed to scientists who are under 35 years of age, have Polish citizenship and permanently reside in Poland. The award is granted in two categories: theoretical aspects of computer science and practical applications of computer science.
‘For years, I have had the pleasure of actively participating in the work related to the Witold Lipski Award and I see how this competition honors true Polish IT talents who make a significant contribution to global IT science. The award is not only a distinction for young researchers, but also supports their further scientific careers and promotes Polish IT science in the world,’ says Professor Krzysztof Diks, a member of the Award Chapter.
Interdisciplinarity and patents
In the category of practical applications of computer science, the awards were given to Krzysztof Kotowski, PhD from the Silesian University of Technology and Maciej Wołczyk, PhD from IDEAS NCBR.
Krzysztof Kotowski, PhD was recognized for his work in the field of neuroscience, medical imaging, bioinformatics and space technologies. He has collaborated with such institutions and companies as the Silesian University of Technology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Roche, Airbus and the European Space Agency.
From the beginning of his scientific career, he has been interested in processing signals of all types – time series, medical images and color images. He designs, develops and validates AI methods to understand why specific AI techniques work or do not work when applied to a specific data analysis problem. He has 4 patents on medical image processing methods, concerning glioma segmentation, liver tumor segmentation and liver cirrhosis detection.
Adaptation of AI models and a deep learning handbook
Maciej Wołczyk, PhD, a post-doc at IDEAS NCBR, conducts research on improving the adaptability of deep learning models: adaptation to new tasks in continuous learning and adaptation to other computational paradigms. This is an extremely important topic for computer science applications due to the rising costs of creating new AI models. The cost of training the largest models in 2023 was estimated at over $100 million, and training is associated with very high energy consumption.
The Award Chapter and the Award Council appreciated not only the research, but also the commitment of the young scientist, who organized scientific and popular science events, participated in workshops at conferences, was also an implementer in NCN and FNP grants and cooperated with renowned scientific institutions such as ETH Zurich and IM PAN as well as Lyft and Google DeepMind. He is also one of the authors of the handbook “Deep Learning. Introduction”, as well as a reviewer at numerous conferences and journals in the field of machine learning.
Path problems, planar graph algorithms
Adam Karczmarz, PhD from the University of Warsaw and IDEAS NCBR was awarded in the category of outstanding achievements in theoretical aspects of computer science. His research focuses mainly on the design of algorithms and data structures for graph problems and their theoretical analysis in classical models of computation. His works have been published in STOC, FOCS, SODA, ICML and ICALP.
The topics he dealt with until 2020 mainly concerned planar graph algorithms, as well as data structures unrelated to graphs, e.g. dynamic texts or dictionaries. In recent years, he has primarily researched fundamental path problems, such as calculating reachability relations, connected components, shortest paths, or maximum flow. In 2024, he became one of the finalists of the 24th edition of the “Polityka” Scientific Awards.
‘The already considerable scientific achievements of this year’s winners of the Witold Lipski Award indicate the enormous potential of young Polish scientists. The Kościuszko Foundation proudly supports this competition, believing that the discoveries of the honored scientists will have a far-reaching impact on the future of modern technologies,’ sums up Professor Grażyna Czetwertyńska, president of the Kościuszko Foundation Poland.
The organizers of the Witold Lipski Award
The award was initiated by a group of Polish computer scientists living outside Poland. The organizer of this year’s Witold Lipski Award is IDEAS NCBR, a Polish research and development center operating in the field of artificial intelligence, and the founder of the award is the Kościuszko Foundation, a non-profit organization that has supported intellectual, scientific, and cultural exchange between Poland and the United States for years.
