The “Student Nobel” is awarded periodically by the Independent Students’ Association to those students who not only achieve high average grade but also speak foreign languages, are involved in students’ research activities, are active in NGOs, participate in students’ exchange programs, traineeships and internships and have a wide range of interests.

Michał Maciejewski is a student at the 5th year of the Faculty of Automatic Control and Robotics at the Łódź University of Technology. In summer 2013, he was a participant in the Polish-American Internship Initiative, a joint venture of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation and the US Embassy in Poland. During his summer internship in the United States he worked for Raytheon BBN Technologies, the “Speech, Language and Multimedia” section, where he was in charge of development of the Content Analyzer project – a computer system that allows analyzing contents of the text obtained for example from the web sites.

After his internship at Rayntheon, he started another one – at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland. There he was responsible for the development of the simulation system for modelling the methods of superconducting magnets protection. As he emphasizes, he used in that work the programming techniques which he had learned during his internship in the USA.

Michał Maciejewski is active in the research clubs – among others, he is the IT coordinator of the AVION Inter-Faculty Aviation Law Club at the Łazarski University in Warsaw. He is also involved in research as a member of Vice-Dean for Science at EEIA Faculty, Professor Andrzej Bartoszewicz’s team dealing with the optimum sliding mode control systems with delay. For “OmnIVOice – development of the social robot” project which allowed to construct the mobile platform for basic research in the area of a human – machine interactions he has been awarded with several awards at Polish national competitions (e.g. STM32 Expert 2012) and international ones (e.g. NI Graphical Design Contest 2012, Istrobot 2013, Bratislava).

This PAII intern also volunteers as a lecturer at the Łódż Children University where he teaches “Fundamentals of Robotics”. His activity and excellent academic performance have been awarded with numerous scholarships, e.g. by the Minister of Science and Higher Education and the Marshal of Łódzkie Province.

Michał Maciejewski received his “Student Nobel” in Warsaw on June 30. The ceremony was attended by Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Daria Lipińska-Nałęcz, Director of the Department of Fine Arts Schools and Cultural Education at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage Professor Wiktor Jędrzejec, and representative of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland Professor Sławomir Wiak.

The Polish-American Internship Initiative is addressed primarily to participants in the Polish-American Freedom Foundation’s two programs: scholarship holders of the Bridge Scholarships Program and students-volunteers of the “Student Volunteers” Program. Eligible to apply for the internships are students of at least second year of a fulltime program at a Polish university, fluent in English, with excellent academic performance and high level of social activity. The internships last 2-3 months and are paid. In 2011-2013, 59 students completed internships at the following U.S. companies: Chevron North America, Citi, General Electric Hitachi, Pittsburgh Glass Works LLC, Raytheon BBN Technologies, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and Westinghouse Electric Company. This year another group of 14 interns will be hosted by the Boeing Company, Chevron, Citi, Pittsburgh Glass Works and Westinghouse. The joint initiative of the PAFF and the US Embassy in Warsaw is managed by the Educational Enterprise Foundation in cooperation with the companies offering the internships and Polish universities.