The Ministry of Education and Science has launched the first edition of "Perły Nauki", the successor of "Diamentowy Grant". Witold Wydmański, M.Sc. eng, from the Bioinformatics Research Group of the Malopolska Centre of Biotechnology, is one of the 98 winners of the "Perły Nauki". The purpose of this competition is to support exceptionally talented undergraduates or students in their third or fourth year of a unified master's programme. Candidates' projects must receive at least two positive reviews from external experts to be eligible for funding.
Witold Wydmanski submitted a project entitled "Prototype networks as a step towards interpretable analysis of protein function". His research will focus on developing methods to understand why proteins are assigned specific functions during functional analysis.
This approach will allow biotechnologists to better understand the interactions between proteins and behaviour of microbiota, which could have important implications for drug discovery and development. The project will use explicable AI techniques to create prototype networks that can be analysed and interpreted by biologists, providing insight into the underlying mechanisms of protein function. By combining computational and experimental approaches, the research aims to improve the accuracy and reliability of protein functional analysis, leading to a better understanding of biological systems.
The research will build on approaches that are currently being developed in MCB and were recently accepted for publication in mSystems (pre-print available on BioRxiv - link).
The amount awarded to M.Sc. eng. Witold Wydmański exceeds 224 000 PLN, what is almost a maximum allowed budget in this new Ministry’s programme.
