Alumni

Maitrayee Gupta received her master’s of science in Cosmology from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. As part of that research, she studied the clustering properties of galaxies and the correlation between galaxy types and their mass, colour, and UV properties. She then joined the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre to pursue a Ph.D. under Dr. Marek Sikora. The main objective of her thesis was to study differences between radiative properties of the accretion flows in Radio Loud (RL) and Radio Quiet (RQ) AGN and their relation to jet production efficiency, for which she received the Preludium Grant. She also received the NAWA Iwanovska Grant to research the variability of RL quasars at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in MA, USA and a fellowship from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to continue her research there with Dr. Aneta Siemiginowska after defending her thesis. She most recently moved to Toulouse, France where she is affiliated with the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) under CNRS, and CNES. There, she works as a postdoc developing EXODUS, a software tool for detecting faint rapid transients in XMM-Newton data that may not have been detected automatically using the XMM-Newton pipeline. While in France, she has also studied variability properties and black-hole masses of low-luminosity AGN. Her research interests include high-energy astrophysics, active galactic nuclei (AGN) and their host galaxies, and X-ray astronomy.

David Abarca grew up in the city of Centralia in Washington State in the USA. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Physics and Astrophysics at Harvard University. It was there that he developed an interest in numerical simulations after writing his senior thesis under the advisement of Prof. Ramesh Narayan and Dr. Aleksander Sądowski (another CAMK alumnus). After graduating, David spent another year at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics continuing to work on research projects with Prof. Narayan and Dr. Sądowski. Through his close collaboration with Dr. Sądowski, he was persuaded to apply to the PhD program at CAMK. He was accepted under the supervision of Prof. Włodek Kluźniak. His main focus during the PhD was adapting the radiative hydrodynamic code, KORAL, to be able to simulate accretion disks around magnetized neutron stars. He also worked on the team who discovered Puffy Disks, involving close collaboration with the radiative astrophysics group at the Silesian University in Opava, Czech Republic. Ultimately, he elected not to pursue astronomy as a career, and instead decided to use his technical and analytical skills to transition into finance. He currently works at ING Hubs Poland in market risk management by validating models related to interest rate risk in the banking book.

Katarzyna studied astronomy at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland, obtaining her BSc and MSc degrees for work focused on the radio morphologies of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Particularly interesting cases of her research were giant radio sources and radio galaxies with recurrent activity. In 2016 she moved to Warsaw where, under the supervision of Prof. Marek Sikora, she investigated the jet production efficiency in AGNs. This task incorporated thousands of galaxies for which a diverse radio dataset was collected, analyzed, and synthesized, resulting in a few well defined samples of galaxies. These studies confirmed the already known yet often questioned in the literature bimodal distribution of radio loudness, and supported the existence of certain threshold(s) condition(s) for the production of the strongest jets. Currently, and since 2020, she has been working as the Research Promoter at the Centre for the History of Renaissance Knowledge at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology PAN where her analytical skills and goal-oriented mind allow her to help build a more robust research environment.

Marzena Śniegowska was born and grew up in Kruszwica, a small town in central Poland. She obtained his BSc. and  MSc in Astronomy at the Faculty of Physics University of Wasaw. She joined as a PhD student at CAMK in 2018. During her PhD studies she worked with Prof. Michał Chodorowski of CAMK PAN and Prof. Bożena Czerny of CFT (Center for Theoretical Physics) PAN on time-dependent phenomena in active galactic nuclei, mostly radiation pressure driven thermal and viscous instabilities. Currently, Marzena is working as a postdoc in Tel Aviv University.

Ankan Sur was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. He obtained his BSc degree in physics from the St. Xavier's College of the University of Calcutta, and an MSc degree in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam, where he was an Amsterdam Excellence Scholar. During his masters' thesis, he worked as part of the LIGO Virgo Collaboration on the statistical measurement of the Hubble constant. He joined CAMK to work on neutron star magnetic fields and on gravitational-wave mountains under the supervision of Dr. Brynmor Haskell. He was awarded the President's Scholarship of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 2021, and was also a predoc at the Flatiron Institute in New York. Following his completion of PhD, Ankan joined Princeton University in the US for his postdoctoral work.

Chandra Shekhar Saraf was born in Sitamarhi, Bihar, India. He obtained his B.Sc. Honors degree in physics from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, and M.Sc. degree in physics from the Savitribai Phule Pune University (formerly University of Pune). For his masters' thesis, he worked at the National Center for Radio Astrophysics in Pune, India on the topic of Lyman alpha radiative transfer to study the reionization period in the evolution of the Universe. He was awarded the V. Subramaniam prize by the Indian National Science Academy for his performance during masters degree. He joined CAMK in 2018 to work on testing cosmological models with cross-correlation between Cosmic Microwave Background lensing and galaxy surveys under the supervision of dr hab. Pawel Bielewicz and dr hab. Michal Chodorowski. His studies was an attempt towards resolving the tensions in modern cosmology like the S_8 tension. After the completion of PhD, Chandra Shekhar joined the Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) in South Korea for his postdoctoral work.

Fatemeh Kayanikhoo (Fatima) was born in Shiraz, Iran. She earned her master’s degree in astrophysics from Shiraz University in 2012. While studying astrophysics, she established an astronomical NGO and has been actively involved in outreach activities as an amateur astronomer since 2009. In 2015, she continued research in astrophysics in collaboration with Birjand University and Shiraz University. In 2019, Fatima received a six-month grant to work with Prof. Constança Providência at the University of Coimbra. She later joined CAMK as a PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Włodek Kluźniak and Dr. Miljenko Čemeljić, focusing on neutron star ultraluminous X-ray sources. Fatima completed her PhD in October 2024 and began a postdoctoral position at the Silesian University of Opava, Czech Republic, in November 2024.

Learn more about Fatima: https://fkayanikhoo.wixsite.com/fatima