Date added: 2025-11-27
Professor Christoforos Kotsakis Awarded the Stanisław Ulam Scholarship (NAWA)
On 21 November 2025, the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) announced the results of the ULAM NAWA 2025 competition, which enables distinguished foreign scholars to carry out research visits at Polish scientific institutions.
Among this year’s recipients of the Stanisław Ulam Scholarship is Professor Christoforos Kotsakis from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. As part of the awarded grant, he will visit Gdańsk University of Technology, where he will conduct research in collaboration with staff members of the Department of Geodesy.
The visit of the Greek researcher to the Gdańsk university will take place between 1 April and 30 September 2026. The scientific supervisor responsible for co-implementing the research project will be Dr. Marek Hubert Zienkiewicz, Associate Professor, who is employed at the Department of Geodesy at Gdańsk University of Technology. The Polish–Greek research team will work on developing a new approach to the analysis of GNSS time series, based on the concept of Msplit and DIA estimation.
It is worth noting that in the ULAM NAWA 2025 call, 324 applications were submitted, of which only 71 projects were approved for funding after substantive evaluation. Detailed competition results can be found on the following website: https://nawa.gov.pl/naukowcy/program-im-ulama/poprzednie-nabory/nabor-zakonczony-2025/wyniki-naboru
Visiting Professor
Dr. Christopher Kotsakis is a full professor of Geodesy in the School of Rural and Surveying Engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a PhD degree in Geomatics Engineering from the University of Calgary (Canada) and he works on the areas of satellite, physical and mathematical geodesy since 1995. Dr. Kotsakis is an elected Fellow of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) which he has served in several roles since 1999. Currently, he is the representative of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) to the Committee of Space Research (COSPAR) of the International Council of Scientific Unions, and he also serves in the Governing Board of the IAG Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) as the representative of IAG Commission 1. His research is focused on modern data analysis and optimization techniques for geodetic estimation problems in relation to Earth observation and monitoring, with special emphasis on geodetic reference frames and modern height systems.
Project Manager
Marek Hubert Zienkiewicz is a graduate of the Faculty of Geodesy, Spatial and Civil Engineering at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, where, under the supervision of prof. Zbigniew Wiśniewski, he developed a doctoral dissertation tilted "Selected theoretical and applied properties of Msplit estimation", which he defended in 2017. After completing his doctoral studies, he continued his research career as an assistant professor at the Department of Geodesy and Oceanography at the Maritime University in Gdynia. In March 2019, he was employed as an assistant professor at the Department of Geodesy, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Gdańsk University of Technology, where he held the position of deputy head in the period 03.2022-06.2023. Research interests of Prof. Zienkiewicz's concerns theoretical and applied properties of method of the parameter estimation in a split functional model of geodetic observations, deformation analysis of geodetic networks, development and study of properties of non-conventional methods of data processing, as well as processing of geodetic observations by using the total and classical least squares method.