We are pleased to announce that Prof. Tomasz Gackowski, Head of the Laboratory of Media Studies at the University of Warsaw, has received the Rector’s Distinction of the University of Warsaw awarded for outstanding scientific achievements and development work.
Behind us is another meeting held as part of the project “Artificial Intelligence and Society – A Comparative Study. Opportunities, Risks, Attitudes and Media-Use Practices in Germany and Poland”, carried out jointly with Professor Cai Thimm’s team from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and funded by the NAWA and DAAD agencies.
This time, we had the pleasure of hosting our partners at Dobra 55. The meeting was intensive and highly substantive, focusing primarily on the analysis of the data collected to date and on planning the subsequent stages of our collaboration.
During the discussions, we addressed:
- the results of the survey conducted in Germany,
- the outcomes of in-depth interviews with experts,
- preliminary findings from biometric measurements carried out among Polish respondents,
- the concept for a publication summarising the project.
We would like to thank our guests from Bonn for the inspiring discussions and the creative atmosphere. Further stages of work lie ahead, including the preparation of the post-project publication; however, we can already state that the conclusions developed so far have significant scientific and societal potential.
The year 2025 was another intense period of work for us, filled with conferences, research projects, and new challenges. It was a time for implementing specific activities, testing solutions in practice, and systematically developing our research.
Last year, we worked on grant-funded research projects, developed international collaborations, and actively participated in scientific events in Poland and abroad. Simultaneously, publications - scientific articles, books, and reports - were produced as a result of these activities.
This period was also marked by teamwork - daily collaboration between researchers, analysts, and specialists who combined methodological, technological, and organizational expertise. This enabled us to conduct several initiatives simultaneously, maintain high research quality, and efficiently achieve our goals.
The year 2025 also brought new technological implementations that significantly improved our research and organizational work. We developed and integrated tools for data analysis, process automation, and research in digital environments, including solutions supporting remote measurements, biometric analysis, and teamwork. These implementations have allowed us to increase the scale of our projects, improve data quality, and shorten research completion times.
We invite you to read a brief summary of last year's most important initiatives and achievements.
Between February 5–7, 2026, the ACDSA 2026 – International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Computer, Data Sciences and Applications took place in Boracay, Philippines, under the patronage of IEEE, where Adam Balcerzak, member of LBM UW presented the paper: “From Code to Cognition: Implementing a Puzzle-Based Game Framework for Biometric Analysis”.
Based on the conference paper, a journal article by Adam Balcerzak, Marcin Łączyński, Aline Hufschmitt, and Tomasz Gackowski will be published in IEEE Xplore.
The project is the result of fruitful collaboration with École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, which led to the development of a puzzle-based escape room game built in Unreal Engine 5. This enabled the creation of a controlled research environment for analyzing cognitive load, visual attention, and emotional responses during problem-solving. The experiment combined gameplay telemetry with eye-tracking, GSR, and facial expression analysis using the Affectiva algorithm, synchronized through iMotions. Results showed that time pressure and stressors intensified negative emotions, while surprise and joy were associated with stronger task focus. One of the project’s objectives was also to demonstrate that game-based environments can serve as replicable and precise tools for cognitive and affective research.