Rafał Moderski

Rafał Moderski is a professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK) in Warsaw. He was deputy director for research at CAMK from 2014 to 2022, and he has been its director since 2022.

He received his doctoral degree, under the supervision of Prof. Marek Sikora, in 1998 at CAMK for his dissertation on the causes of the bimodal distribution of jet activity in quasars. It was followed by a two-year (1999-2000) postdoctoral fellowship at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) of the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA), conducting research on the non-thermal radiation of relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts. In 2007 he received his habilitation and since 2015 he has been titled Professor of Physical Sciences.

Since 2009, Prof. Moderski has been the national coordinator of the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.), project, where, apart from strictly scientific activities, he manages the subjects related to financing the participation of Polish scientists in the H.E.S.S. project, monitors and reports on the implementation of these funds, and represents the Polish shareholders of the experiment in the governing bodies of the collaboration and internationally.

In previous years, Prof. Moderski was involved in the development and construction of the SST-1M telescope system for the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) observatory, an activity he is continuing in the framework of the construction of a gamma-ray observatory by a Polish-Swiss-Czech consortium in Ondrejov in the Czech Republic.

Prof. Moderski also served as a secretary (2003-2014) and a deputy chairman (2014-2019) of the Committee of Astronomy of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS).

The link to his publications included by the service NASA ADS can be found here.

Research interests

• high energy astrophysics,
• cosmic sources of high-energy particles,
• H.E.S.S. and CTA projects.

Grants / Scientific projects

• "Very high energy astrophysics with H.E.S.S.". (2021-2022). Funding information: project MEiN - program to support the participation of Polish research groups in international research infrastructure projects (2021/WK/06),
• "Very High Energy Astrophysics with H.E.S.S. and MAGIC" (2017-2020). Funding information: HARMONIA project, NCN (2016/22/M/ST9/00382),
• "Obserwacje wysokoenergetycznych źródeł astrofizycznych w ramach międzynarodowych projektów H.E.S.S. i MAGIC" (2010-2017). Funding information: international project not co-funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (745/N-HESS-MAGIC/2010/0),
• "Reconfinement shocks in blazars" (2008-2011). Funding information: own research project of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education/NSC (N N203 301635).

Awards / Honors

• Nagroda Naukowa im. Mikołaja Kopernika, prize of the city of Cracow and the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, team prize for a team of scientists from NCAC PAS (2010).
• Bruno Rossi Prize by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society, team prize for the entire H.E.S.S. collaboration (2010).
• Descartes Research Prize by the European Commission, team prize for the entire H.E.S.S. collaboration (2006).