Alumni

Paweł Artymowicz

(University of Toronto, Canada)

Pawel Artymowicz studied astronomy and physics at Warsaw University, and worked on his PhD thesis (defended at CAMK) at Space Telescope Sci. Institute in Baltimore. He was a NASA Hubble Fellow at UC Santa Cruz in California, senior researcher and assistant prof. in Stockholm University, and from 2005 full prof. of Physics and Astrophysics at University of Toronto. His highly cited work deals with the origin and evolution of binary and planetary systems, both analytically and numerically. He builds supercomputing clusters. Following a Polish presidential plane catastrophe in 2010, as scientist and pilot with 22 years of experience he has helped to investigate the details of the accident.

Thesis title: Fale gęstości w galaktykach

Supervisor: Wojciech Dziembowski

Year of defence: 1990

Adam Dobrzycki

(European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany)

Thesis title: Widmo liniowe kwazarów

Supervisor: Bożena Czerny

Year of defence: 1991

Aneta Siemiginowska

(Chandra X-ray Center of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)

 

Aneta Siemiginowska is a Senior Astrophysicist at the Chandra X-ray Center of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. She has worked in both theoretical and observational aspects of X-ray astronomy with interests in extragalactic radio sources, quasars, powerful jets and statistical methods. She is a founding member of the CHASC Astrostatistics Center, promoting collaborations between astrophysicists and statisticians. Her main statistical interests include principled and advanced statistical methods for high energy astrophysics data. She studies extragalactic radio sources and quasars, and has discovered a number of hundred-kiloparsec long relativistic X-ray jets associated with distant quasars.

Thesis title: Thin accretion disks in Active Galactic Nuclei: theory and observations

Supervisor: Bożena Czerny

Year of defence: 1991

Ryszard Szczerba

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Toruń)

Ryszard Szczerba was born and raised in Warmia, in north-eastern Poland. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, obtaining a master's degree in theoretical physics (in particular quantum mechanics). His interests changed, however, and in 1991 he obtained a PhD in astrophysics at our Institute under the supervision of prof. Romuald Tylenda. One of the results of this work was the photoionization code used by others, but also included in the time-dependent photoionization code developed by students and collaborators of prof. Detlef Schoenberner. After obtaining his PhD, he completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute d'Astrophysique de Paris working with prof. Alain Omont, and then a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary working with prof. Sun Kwok. After returning to CAMK in 1995, he developed collaboration with many groups and individuals in Europe and beyond, incl. Profs. Grażyna Stasińska (Muedon), Detlef Schoenberner (Kiel / Potsdam), Thomas Henning (Jena / Heidelberg), Peisheng Chen (Kunming), Biwei Jiang (Beijng), Jurgen Stutzki (Koeln), and Drs. Pedro Garcia-Lario (ESAC/Madrid), Kevin Volk (Baltimore), Dr. Eric Lagadec (Nice). In 2000, he obtained his habilitation at CAMK for the work "Stationary and hydrodynamic models of dust-gas envelopes around AGB and post-AGB stars: analysis of infrared spectral features". In 2008, he received the title of professor from the President of the Republic of Poland and was appointed to the position of professor at CAMK. His interests are mainly related to the study of evolved stars by means of space based observations in infrared and at submillimeter spectral range. He was the lead co-I for Poland on the Herschel / HIFI instrument and a member of the SPICA Heads of Nations before the mission was removed from the M5 competition by ESA. Since 2015, he is serving as the Chairman of the Scientific Council of our Institute.

Thesis title: Testing the evolution of planetary nebulae with distance-independent methods

Supervisor: Romuald Tylenda

Year of defence: 1991

Magdalena Zbyszewska

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Thesis title: Efekt Comptona i proces produkcji par pozyton-elektron w astrofizyce wysokich energii

Supervisor: Andrzej Zdziarski

Year of defence: 1991

Stanisław Zoła

(Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland)

Thesis title: Alaliza fotoelektrycznych krzywych zmian blasku układów typu algola z dyskami akrecyjnymi: RZ Oph i KU Cyg

Supervisor: Józef Smak

Year of defence: 1991

Michał Chodorowski

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Thesis title: Wtórne grawitacyjne anizotropie mikrofalowego promieniowania tła

Supervisor: Marek Demiański

Year of defence: 1994

Piotr Jaranowski

(University of Białystok, Poland)

Thesis title: Analysis of the Gravitational Wave Signal from a Compact Binary System

Supervisor: Andrzej Królak

Year of defence: 1994

Radosław Stompor

(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Laboratoire Astroparticule et Cosmologie, France)

Thesis title: Całkowanie równania Boltzmanna dla fotonów w rozszerzającym się Wszechświecie

Supervisor: Marek Demiański

Year of defence: 1994

Piotr Życki

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Piotr Zycki started working in CAMK as research assistant in 1991. He got his PhD in 1995 and then spent three years at University of Durham (UK) as a post-doc, collaborating with Chris Done. After returning to CAMK he continues his research in Warsaw. He obtained the 'habilitacja' degree in 2002. In 2008 he received the title of professor. His research interests revolve around accretion onto compact objects, mostly black holes. He has done various aspects of data analysis and simulations on spectral and temporal properties of X-ray emission from accretion flows. He is especially interested in properties of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPO) in X-rays, which he studies with the goal of constraining possible models of QPO. He is also involved with the institute administration and management, serving as the institute director 2014-2022.

 

Thesis title: X-Ray Emission and Reprocessing in Active Galactic Nuclei

Supervisor: Andrzej Zdziarski

Year of defence: 1995

Danuta Dobrzycka

(European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany)

Thesis title: The Long - and Short - Timescale Light Variations in Symbiotic Stars

Supervisor: Joanna Mikołajewska

Year of defence: 1996

Andrzej Maciołek-Niedźwiecki

(University of Lodz, Poland)

Thesis title: The Effect of Electron-Positron Pair Production and Thermal Conduction in Compact Objects

Supervisor: Andrzej Zdziarski

Year of defence: 1996

Paweł Magdziarz

Thesis title: Variable Radiation From Jets and x/gamma Emission From AGNs

Supervisor: Jerzy Machalski

Year of defence: 1996

Daniel Proga

(University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA)

Daniel Proga is a Full Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He was born and raised in Brzeziny, Łódź Voivodeship, Poland. He studied astronomy at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and earned his master's degree in 1990 under supervision of Prof. Andrzej Strobel. He then spent three years as a predoctoral fellow  at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,MA, USA, where he worked with Dr. Scott Kenyon. After obtaining his PhD degree he worked at Imperial College (London, UK), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (Greenbelt, MD, USA), University of Colorado (Boulder, CO, USA), and Princeton University  (Princeton, NJ, USA). His main interests are mass accretion processes onto compact objects and related mass outflows in systems such as quasars and X-ray binaries.He uses primarily numerical methods for astrophysical fluid dynamics to study effects of radiation and magnetic fields on gas under the influence of gravity. He also works on photoionization and radiative transfer processes.

Thesis title: Illumination in Symbiotic Binary Stars: NLTE Photoionization Models

Supervisor: Joanna Mikołajewska

Year of defence: 1996

Jerzy Krzesiński

(Astronomical Observatory of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland)

Thesis title: Niestabilność pulsacyjna gwiazd wczesnych typów widmowych podwójnej gromady h oraz x Persei

Supervisor: Jerzy M. Kreiner

Year of defence: 1997

Ewa Łokas

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Thesis title: Statistics and Dynamics of Large Scale Cosmic Fields in Weakly Nonlinear Regime

Supervisor: Roman Juszkiewicz

Year of defence: 1997

Beata Mazur

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Thesis title: Poszukiwanie gwiazd zmiennych w gromadach kulistych i starych gromadach otwartych

Supervisor: Janusz Kałużny

Year of defence: 1997

Sławomir Górny

Thesis title: Planetary Nebulae with Wolf-Rayet Type Central Stars

Supervisor: Romuald Tylenda

Year of defence: 1998

Rafał Moderski

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center)

Thesis title: Reasons for Bimodal Distribution of Jet Activity of Quasars

Supervisor: Marek Sikora

Year of defence: 1998

Dorota Rosińska

(University of Warsaw)

Thesis title: Pulsations and Stability of Neutron Stars and Strange Stars

Supervisor: Paweł Haensel

Year of defence: 1998

Mirosław Schmidt

(Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Toruń)

Thesis title: Analysis of the Spectroscopic Observations of Hypergiant HR 8752 with Application of Atmosperic Models

Supervisor: Romuald Tylenda

Year of defence: 1998

Joanna Kuraszkiewicz

(Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)

Thesis title: Exploring the Central Power House of Quasars via Emission Lines

Supervisor: Bożena Czerny

Year of defence: 1999

Sławomira Szutowicz

(Space Research Center, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

Thesis title: Analysis of Physical Properties of a Cometary Nucleus Based on Investigations of Nongravitational Perturbations in the Orbital Motion of a Comet

Supervisor: Grzegorz Sitarski

Year of defence: 1999