The aim of the competition is to support the education of doctoral students and the financing of research projects carried out by them as part of the preparation of doctoral dissertations. The research team consists exclusively of two people – a supervisor, being the project manager, and a doctoral student.

So that artificial intelligence would not forget

Tomasz Trzciński, PhD, DSc, Associate Professor, from the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology, is one of the winners. His project entitled "Continuous learning of self-supervised representations” received the funding.

– ‘As early as in our childhood, we tend to learn not only by following instructions from our care-takers, but also very often through the exploration of the world around us on our own’ – says prof. Tomasz Trzciński. – ‘In machine learning, methods that conceptually try to imitate such behavior are called self-supervised learning methods’ – he explains.

Unfortunately, unlike children, all artificial neural networks suffer from the so-called "catastrophic forgetting" – a situation in which the quality of the model on previously analysed data drops drastically each time it is trained with the use of new information. It's like we're losing all memory of past experiences every time we learn to do a new job.

– ‘In the project, we plan to thoroughly examine and understand the essence of forgetting in artificial self-supervised systems in order to ultimately propose innovative solutions that will continuously accumulate knowledge about the world around us without supervision’ – announces prof. Tomasz Trzciński.

Improving "frozen smoke"

The other project from the WUT to receive funding is entitled "Highly elastic, double cross-linked organic silicon aerogels dried using a cheap and scalable method under atmospheric pressure". Jakub Gac, PhD, DSc, Associate Professor, from the Faculty of Chemical and Process Engineering, is the project manager.

Aerogels are one of the most interesting modern materials. These are very light materials – due to their low density, they are called "permanent mist", "frozen smoke" or “spirit-material". They are also characterised by a large specific surface area and sorption capacity. However, they are by no means perfect materials.

– ‘Practical application and use of aerogels are limited by two major drawbacks. Firstly, they are usually fragile, since they consist mainly of air, and their skeletons – of randomly connected particles’ – explains prof. Jakub Gac. – ‘Secondly, the key stage of preparation is the drying process, which is replacing the liquid solvent in the gel pores with air. The process takes place using fluids in a supercritical state, i.e. under very high pressure, which makes this technology energy-intensive and expensive’ – he adds.

The objective of the project is to overcome both problems by developing a synthesis of double cross-linked silico-organic aerogels. – 'Double cross-linking' means that the precursor molecules – the specific 'bricks' that form the aerogel structure – are linked to each other in two ways. The first is a silane bond, typical of all known silica aerogels. The second type is the hydrocarbon chain formed as a result of the polymerisation reaction between organic groups of precursors, containing a double bond’ – the researcher says.

The presence of second bonds will increase the mechanical resistance and their elasticity. There are indications that double cross-linking will also enable the process of drying under atmospheric pressure.

– ‘This, in turn, may open the way to manufacturing aerogels on a larger scale, and consequently extend the use of these nontypical materials’ – emphasizes prof. Jakub Gac.

In the third edition of the PRELUDE BIS competition, 228 researchers applied for funding. 97 applicants will receive grants with a total value of over PLN 55 million.