Tomasz Bulik

Professor Tomasz Bulik is a co-originator of AstroCeNT – Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Center where he has performed a role of a leader of the Seismic Sensor Group since 2018. Additionally, he serves as a professor at the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw.

Professor Bulik recevied his doctoral degree for his work on models of accretion-powered X-ray pulsars at the Pennsylvania State University in 1993. He completed his three-year Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Enrico Fermi Institute at The University of Chicago. After his return to Poland, he worked at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (NCAC) in Warsaw and he has been an employee at the University of Warsaw for almost 16 years. In 2009, Professor Bulik has been granted a full professor title.

Throughout his scientific career, Prof. Bulik held multiple offices e.g. a chairman of the Astronomical Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences, a vice-director of the Astronomical Institute University of Warsaw. Furthermore, he is also a member of the Scientific Excellence Council (the Ist term).

Presently, Professor Bulik is a collaborator of the LIGO/Virgo projects devoted to the detection of gravitational waves. He is also in charge of the readying of the next-generation gravitational waves detector for the Einstein Telescope Steering Committee. Additionally, he is also involved in the High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) experiment.

According to the Scopus database (Mar. 8, 2021), he is an author and co-author of 511 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited almost 55 000 times. The link to his publications included by the service NASA ADS can be found below:
ADS

Recently, prof. Bulik supervises three Ph.D. students - Neha Singh (the University of Warsaw), Malgorzata Curyło (the University of Warsaw), and Wathela Alhassan (NCAC). His previous Ph.D. students were e.g. prof. Krzysztof Belczynski, dr Izabela Kowalska-Leszczyńska, dr Mira Grudzińska, and dr Marek Cieślar. Moreover, he coordinates post-doctoral fellowships of dr Shariful Alam and dr Josiah Ensing.

Professor Bulik is also actively involved in the promotion of astronomy to a general audience e.g.

• Podcasts (in Polish).
• The lecture entitled „Dark room, dark matter, and dark energy”.
• The article entitled „Prof. Bulik o badaniach fal grawitacyjnych...”, Nauka w Polsce (in Polish).

His research interests focus on:

• binary stars evolution,
• high energy astrophysics,
• gravitational waves,
• seismic sensors to detect gravitational waves.

Prof. Bulik has also managed the below projects:

• International Research Agenda Grant “AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre” (Jul. 2018 – May 2023). Funding information: Foundation for Polish Science (FNP).
• TEAM – “Advanced algorithms for Newtonian noise cancellation in-ground based gravitational wave detectors” (2017-2020). Funding information: Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) 2017-2020

Awards / Honors

His significant contribution to the detection of gravitational waves has been honored by the prestigious awards:

• Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the authors of the first direct detection of gravitational waves (2016).
• The International Research Agendas Program of the Foundation for Polish Science.