Speakers

Since 2011, Leszek Grabarczyk has been Deputy Director of the National Centre for Research and Development (NCBR) - a government agency with an annual budget of PLN 5.5bn which supports the R&D sector in Poland. He is responsible for the development and implementation of programmes that promote innovation and research commercialisation. In 2014, the NCBR has launched BRIdge - a family of programmes that constitute Poland's first ever system of financing new technologies by the public-private partnership while using private equity funds together with the world's largest entities of this type. Thanks to the activities of the NCBR, Poland's R&D expenditure in 2012 achieved a record result of PLN14.4 billion - almost 23% more than in the previous year.