Polish Science and Technology Summit at Berkeley

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Following the success of the previous edition, this will be a unique and stimulating environment for science and technology. Our event aims to promote the work of Polish-origin scientists and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area region and create favorable conditions for establishing new and deeper relationships between Polish professionals and the multidisciplinary research community.

Co-organizer

Honorary Patronage

Partners

Agenda

Speakers

Przemysław Bienias

Amazon/Caltech

Quantum Computing

Przemysław (Pshemek) Bienias is a Research Scientist at the Center for Quantum Computing at Amazon Web Services and Caltech. His career spans over fifteen years in the rapidly advancing field of quantum technologies. His work focuses on quantum error correction, ensuring that quantum computers function correctly even when some of their components fail. He is also involved in the optimization and design of quantum computing hardware. His research integrates machine learning techniques, including deep learning, to enhance quantum computing and improve the understanding of complex quantum many-body systems. He holds a PhD in Quantum Physics, earned in 2016 from the University of Stuttgart. Following his PhD, he worked as an Assistant Research Scientist and faculty member at the University of Maryland, where he was affiliated with the Joint Quantum Institute and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He was also a researcher at the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (QuICS). His academic journey began at the University of Warsaw, where he studied in the Interdisciplinary Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences program, while also conducting research at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He resides in San Francisco and enjoys outdoor sports, particularly running, hiking, biking, and skiing.

Paul Bryzek

UC Berkeley/Carbon Sustain

Founding CarbonSustain, AI TurboTax for carbon emission accounting, at UC Berkeley Haas as an MBA student.

Paul Bryzek Haas MBA ‘24: founder of CarbonSustain carbon emission accounting and AI insights SaaS built for SMBs. CarbonSustain was a SkyDeck Pad-13 finalist, 2024 Big Ideas Winner, and 2nd place at UC Launch pitch competition. He is the EWMBAA VP of Entrepreneurship and founder and co-president of Haas Blockchain Club (HBC). He is a CITRIS Climate Innovation Fellow from May - Nov 2024. He's a 2nd time founder, his former social media iOS app scaled to 50k users through celebrity partnerships with legendary producer Quincy Jones. He has over 15 years of full stack software development experience. He’s a proven leader, architect, and developer. A decade of Fortune 500 C-suite consulting for mobile and web digital transformation. B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA. He is a Polish-American and Polish citizen.

Mark Danner

UC Berkeley

Miłosz on Grizzly Peak: Thoughts on the Poet

Mark Danner is a writer, reporter and educator who for more than three decades has written on war, politics and conflict. He has covered Central America, Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the Middle East, and written extensively on American politics, from Reagan to Trump. Danner holds the Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California, Berkeley and is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College. Among his books are The Massacre at El Mozote, Torture and Truth, The Secret Way to War, Stripping Bare the Body and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. Danner was a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, Aperture and many other newspapers and magazines. He has written and co-produced two hour-long ABC News documentaries and an eight-part documentary series on US foreign policy and genocide. Danner’s work has received, among other honors, a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the Carey McWilliams Award, a Guggenheim and an Emmy. In 1999 Danner was named a MacArthur Fellow. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association, and a resident curator at the Telluride Film Festival. He speaks and lectures widely on foreign policy and America’s role in the world.

Paweł Gniewek

Rezo Therapeutics

Drug Discovery in the Age of AI Revolution

Paweł Gniewek is a Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Rezo with over 15 years of experience in computational sciences, including more than 5 years focused on applying machine learning to drug discovery. Paweł holds an M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Warsaw, where he studied structural bioinformatics, and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he researched the mechanics of microbial populations. He has gained his experience in the industry by leading projects at Atomwise and Rezo Therapeutics, focusing on targeting undruggable proteins and searching for new biology of diseases.

Łukasz Komza

UC Berkeley

Quantum internet: connecting quantum systems with light

Lukasz Komza is a Physics PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. He started working with Alp Sipahigil in the Quantum Devices Group in 2021 on the characterization and integration of silicon qubits in photonics. Prior to starting his PhD, Lukasz interned at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, working with Michael Eggleston on optical coherence tomography. He studied quantum light sources in 2D materials with Stefan Strauf during his undergraduate education, where he received the Alfred M. Mayer prize.
A proud member of Polish Club of Berkeley he is known for his extensive expertise in śliwowica.

Agata Kotkowska

EU Commission/UC Berkeley

Digital Dominoes: How California and Brussels Are Shaping Global Tech.

Agata Kotkowska is a distinguished expert on European Union policies, with a focus on sustainable finance, circular economy, sustainable production, and consumption. She has extensive experience with over two decades working at the European Commission, where she has played a key role in designing finance instruments for the EU Green Deal, including for several legal proposals in the environmental policy. Previously, she led a team at the EASME Executive Agency, coordinating research and innovation projects in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and transport sectors. Her work has directly contributed to the recast of key EU directives, including the Energy Performance of Buildings and Energy Efficiency Directives. Agata’s international experience includes representing the EU in various forums, negotiating with Member States, and coordinating with third countries on cross-border cooperation and transnational programs. In 2023/24, Agata was EU Fellow at UC Berkeley affiliated with the Institute of European Studies as a visiting researcher, where she has researched the financial innovations essential for the private capital market to leverage investments in support of biodiversity requirements in Europe and across the globe.

Piotr Kuźnicki

SWPS

Bridging Markets: Why US VCs should pay attention to Poland's startups.

Piotr Kuźnicki is a Polish advocate and New York attorney-at-law specializing in corporate law. His expertise includes setting up corporate governance structures, managing mergers and acquisitions, and advising startups and investors. He has experience across various industries, including gaming, finance, and retail. Before founding his own law firm, he worked at top-tier law firms, ranging from international firms to boutique business law practices.
He graduated summa cum laude from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Warsaw, where he also earned a Ph.D. with a thesis on "The Boundaries of Legal Personality." Additionally, he completed an LL.M. at UC Berkeley Law School, where he received pro bono honors, and has conducted research at Yale and UCLA.
Piotr teaches corporate law and venture capital transactions at SWPS University, where he also coordinates studies in law and technology. He regularly appears as an expert at conferences and legal courses. His articles have been published in numerous legal journals, and he was nominated for the "Rising Stars" competition organized by Wolters Kluwer.
He is a co-founder of the California Educational Foundation in Poland. Beyond his legal career, Piotr is also a surfing instructor and an avid fan of water sports.

Przemysław Jeziorski

UC Berkeley

Dynamic pricing and consumer welfare

Przemyslaw Jeziorski (Przemek) is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds Egon and Joan Von Kaschnitz Distinguished Professorship Chair in Business Administration. With over 15 years of experience in research and teaching, he has earned a reputation as a leading expert in quantitative marketing, industrial organization, and applied microeconomics. Jeziorski published in several top-tier academic journals, including the Marketing Science, Management Science and RAND Journal of Economics. He has also been awarded numerous grants and fellowships from organizations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He is an Associate Editor of Management Science, and Quantitative Marketing and Economics. He also sits on the editorial board of Marketing Science. As a teacher, Jeziorski mentored over 1,500 MBA and PhD students with a focus on equipping them with the analytical tools necessary for success in the modern business world. His teaching interests include Marketing Analytics, A.I., and Digital Marketing. In addition to his academic work, Jeziorski is a co-founder of Keybee, a UC Berkeley Skydeck start-up that provides a data-driven solution to managing thousands of short-term rentals. He has also provided expert testimony in a number of litigation cases, including a landmark San Francisco opioid trial. Moreover, he consulted on large fintech, entrepreneurship and marketing projects with companies such as Microsoft, Mastercard, Unilever, MIC Tanzania, KCB Bank Kenya, Banco de Desarrollo Productivo, and Fino Payments Bank. He holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford Graduate School of Business, MS Mathematics and MA Economics from the University of University of Arizona. He also holds a BA in Economics from Warsaw School of Economics.

Wojciech Osowiecki

Lam Research

Innovation accelerated: Disruptive approaches for the next era of semiconductor manufacturing

Wojciech Osowiecki joined Lam Research, a Fortune 500 semiconductor equipment manufacturer, in 2019 as a process engineer. He is the founder and chair of Lam Employee Sustainability Community (LESC), an employee resource group devoted to environmental sustainability with over 1000 members. Wojtek works in product marketing for the Global Product Group, where he is responsible for the environmental sustainability and Equipment Intelligence® roadmaps of all Lam products. He previously served as vice president of the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative and is a 2018 Siebel Scholar in energy science. In 2015, he reactivated the Polish Club of Berkeley and served as its president until 2018. Wojtek holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from UC Berkeley and a joint B.S. and M.S. degree in chemistry from Yale University.

Barbara Romanowicz

UC Berkeley

Seismic imaging: A window into the earth's interior.

I was born in France of Polish parents. My mother was a writer (3 of her novels have been recently re-published by PIW in Poland) and my father held a Polish bookstore “Libella” on the Ile StLouis in Paris. I studied mathematics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, and completed a PhD in Geophysics at the Université Paris 7 in 1979. After a 2 year post-doc at MIT (Cambridge, Mass) I came back to Paris in 1981 where, for the next ten years, I developed the global digital broadband seismic network GEOSCOPE, which is still operational today. In 1991, I moved to a faculty position at UC Berkeley, where, as Director of UC Berkeley's Seismological Laboratory between 1991 and 2011, I developed real-time earthquake monitoring in northern California, in collaboration with the US Geological Survey (Menlo Park, California). I held the chair of “Physics of the Earth’s Interior” at the Collège de France in Paris from 2011 to 2020, and have been a “Professor of the Graduate School” at UC Berkeley since 2016. Among my research interests, note: imaging of deep earth structure and dynamics using seismological tools, earthquake processes and scaling laws, real time estimation of earthquake parameters, development of modern broadband seismic and geophysical observatories on land and in the oceans and planetary seismology. I am a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Académie des Sciences in France and a foreign associate of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Michał Romanowski

Uniwersytet Warszawski

The rule of values as a prerequisite for being forever young.

Michał Romanowski lectures company law, corporate governance and capital markets law at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw. He has promoted several PhDs in commercial law at the University of Warsaw. From 2006 to 2015 the youngest member of the Polish Civil Law Codification Commission composed of twelve of the most prominent Polish private law professors and judges of the Civil Chamber of the Polish Supreme Court. The Civil Law Codification Commission is an expert body attached to the Minister of Justice providing opinions to the Polish government and the Polish parliament. Within the Commission, he was responsible, inter alia, for the adaptation of Polish company law to EU law. Author of the position of the Codification Commission on the European Commission's plan to strengthen corporate governance in the European Union. He has authored approximately 60 opinions of the Codification Commission on EU company law and contract law reform projects. Expert of the Polish Parliament and Senate, the Economic Council to the Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk (former President of the Council of the EU), the Financial Supervision Commission. In addition to his activities in business law, he has been involved in defending the rule of law in Poland for 5 years. Attorney of leading Polish judges, including internationally recognised Judge Igor Tuleyi and Judge Paweł Juszczyszyn before Polish and European courts, including the European Court of Human Rights. Expert and defender of free media in Poland such as TVN24 (Discovery Group) and Gazeta Wyborcza (the first free media in Poland after 1989 founded by Adam Michnik). His rights to freedom to practise law were claimed by international organisations defending lawyers' rights such as Lawyers for Lawyers, the Amsterdam Bar Association and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). In a report by Lawyers for Lawyers and the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) to the Universal Periodic Review of Poland, identified as one of two Polish attorneys harassed by the Polish authorities under the United Right government (2015-2023) for representing free judges Pawel Juszczyszyn and Igor Tuleyi. Author of an opinion for one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, Norwegian Norges, on gross human rights violations by Poland's largest and one of Central and Eastern Europe's largest multi-energy companies, Orlen S.A, listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and controlled by the Polish government in connection with the acquisition of Polska Press (Poland's largest regional media outlet) for the ruling party Law and Justice (Law and Justice) in Poland from 2015 to 2023. Based on its opinion, the Norges Fund placed Orlen S.A. on a watch list for gross human rights violations in the restriction of media freedom (the first such case in Polish history and probably one of the few in Europe). Originator and co-founder of the leading business law firm Romanowski i Wspólnicy in Poland.

Weronika Wolszczak

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Seeing the Unseen: How to Stop Nuclear Terrorists and Cure Cancer?

Weronika Wolszczak is a research scientist currently affiliated with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). She conducts cutting-edge research in the Scintillation Engineering Lab, which focuses on developing new materials for radiation detection, with applications ranging from medical imaging to nuclear security. This group is renowned for discovering over 22 new scintillating materials in the past 15 years. Wolszczak's work at LBNL includes contributing to the development and optimization of these materials, with a particular focus on understanding the physics and limitations of radiation detection. Wolszczak earned her Ph.D. from TU Delft in 2019. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Nanotechnology Centre of Wake Forest University from 2019 to 2021, supported by a prestigious Rubicon grant for young and talented scientists. She joined LBNL as a postdoc in 2021 and was subsequently promoted to the position of research scientist. She has a strong background in physics and materials science and has worked at various prestigious institutions. Her research emphasizes exploring the fundamental physical phenomena underlying scintillation and enhancing the properties of these materials through compositional and structural modifications.

Joanna Wysocka

Stanford

Human development and evolution through the lens of gene regulation.

Joanna Wysocka is a Lorry Lokey Professor in the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology and the Department of Developmental Biology at Stanford University, a Member of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and an HHMI Investigator.
Joanna’s research is focused on gene regulation in human development, disease and evolution. She is broadly recognized for her work on gene regulatory mechanisms underlying stem cell function, cellular plasticity and differentiation. Some of her group’s most notable contributions include discovery of chromatin signatures associated with active and primed enhancer elements, development of new tools to visualize and perturb regulatory regions in living cells, and insights into the mechanisms by which changes in gene expression drive evolution, individual variation and disease of the human face.
Joanna is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Searle Scholar Award, W.M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar Award, ISSCR Outstanding Young Investigator Award, Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and ISSCR Momentum Award. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018, to the National Academy of Science in 2024 and as an EMBO international member in 2019.

Date and Venue

October 12th 2024
Start time: 11:30 AM
Martin Luther King Jr. Building (Tilden Room 5th floor)
2495 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 94720
This event is ADA accesible

Terms and Conditions

Please review our Terms and Conditions for the conference.

Academic Patronage

Organizing Committee:

Emil Albrychiewicz (Chair)
Adrian Kubicki
Krysia Pietraszkiewcz

Marketing and promotion:

Wiktoria Perner