At the 148th Session of the General Assembly of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), scholars elected the persons who will serve as vice-presidents of the PAN for the next four years. They were proposed by Prof. Marek Konarzewski, who was elected President of PAN. The vice-presidents became Prof. Aleksander Welfe, Dr Mirosława Ostrowska, Prof. Natalia Sobczak and Prof. Dariusz Jemielniak.

The President-elect, Prof. Konarzewski, selected the candidates for the vice-presidents on the basis of their competence and experience in the following areas: challenges related to the systemic change and the new law on the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN); regulation of the relationship between the corporation of scientists and the institutes of the PAN; increasing the participation of the PAN in social discourse and taking care of the Academy’s image; cooperation with the university environment.

Prof. Welfe is an econometrician and macroeconomist. Prof. Jemielniak is a theoretician of management and sociology, Dr Ostrowska is an oceanologist and is particularly concerned with biophysics and marine optics, while Prof. Sobczak is involved in research into high-temperature phenomena in the area of liquid metal engineering, including the development of a new generation of materials for the energy sector.