He is a professor in the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Warsaw. In 1976 he graduated at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw. In 1982 he received a PhD in mathematics at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; in 1997 he obtained a post-doctoral degree at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw. In 2014 he obtained from the president of Poland the honorary title of a professor of mathematics.
Professor Marciniak has worked at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw since 1976. In 1996-2005 he was the dean of the Institute. In 2012-2010 he has been an elected member of the Senate of the Warsaw University, chairing the Senate’s Commission on Students and Quality of Teaching.
In the years 2005-2007 he held the post of the President of the State Accreditation Committee. In the years 2007-2010 he was the chairman of the Commission of Didactics in the Committee of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Since 2002 member of the Mathematics Expert Group of the OECD PISA program; in 2013-2017 – chairman of this Group. In 2012-2017 member of CERI – the steering committee on education research in OECD. He was also a member of the advisory group for the “Scaling up” program of the Brookings Institute, USA. In 2015-2019 member of the Technical Advisory Group on Education Systems in the World Bank. Served as an expert on education in Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Bulgaria, Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
From 2007 through 2009 he held the post of Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of National Education, where he was responsible for defining main principles in the education curriculum reform and the quality of teaching. From 2010 through 2012 he held the post of Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, where he was responsible for higher education institutions. He also chaired the governmental committee on the implementation of the European Qualification Framework. At present he is the President of the National Council on Higher Education and Science, elected by the Polish academic community for the term 2017-2021.
Professor Zbigniew Marciniak is the author of more than 30 scientific publications in the field of algebra. He is a member of editorial committees of periodicals: “Delta” and “Algebra and Discrete Mathematics”.