Professor Leszek Roszkowski

Research

Biography

Professor Leszek Roszkowski is a theoretical physicist and director of “AstroCeNT – Science and Technology Centre for Particle Astrophysics”, an International Research Agenda based at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is also a founder of and professor at the Particle Theory Group at the National Centre for Nuclear Research at Świerk near Warsaw.

Professor Roszkowski obtained Master’s degree in physics from Warsaw University in 1981, a PhD degree from the University of California, Davis in 1987 and a Polish post-doctoral degree habilitation (habilitacja) from the Jagiellonian University in 1993. He held postdoctoral research training at CERN, University of Michigan and University of Minnesota and, since 2003, the post of a professor at the University of Sheffield in the UK. After spending 25 years abroad, in 2011 he returned to Poland as a recipient of a Welcome programme award from the Foundation of Polish Science. Subsequently, from 2016 to 2022, he held a Maestro grant from National Science Centre. Starting from 1 July 2018 his main occupation has been to set up and lead AstroCeNT.

Professor Roszkowski is a member of the European Academy of Sciences (since 2022) and the Chamber of Astronomy and Mathematical and Natural Sciences of Copernican Academy (since 2023). Roszkowski is the initiator of the highly-successful international annual conference series COSMO and chairman of the COSMO Steering Committee.

Since 2019 he has served as a representative of Poland in the General Assembly of APPEC (Astroparticle Physics European Consortium) and has recently been elected its vice-chair.

Main scientific interests

Professor Roszkowski’s scientific research and interests lie in the domains of quantum phenomena and elementary particle physics (so-called “microcosm”), and in studying the nature of the Universe, especially its particle content and evolution since the Big Bang (“macrocosm”). His main area of interest and activity is the nature of the dark matter in the Universe.

He has co-authored over 160 articles, mostly published in high impact journals: JHEP, Phys. Rev. D, Phys. Letters B, JCAP and Phys. Rev. Letters. He has also written extensive reviews on dark matter, including one in Physics Reports and Reports on Progress in Physics.

Main awards

• Welcome Program grant “Bayesian approach to multi-parameter problems in physics and beyond involving parallel computing and large data-sets”, 5 360 480 PLN, source: Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), 2011/01- 2015/12, principal investigator
• Maestro grant “Dark matter: theoretical models, particle candidates and prospects of their experimental discovery”, 3 296 604 PLN, source: National Science Centre (NCN), 2016/06 – 2021/05, principal investigator
• International Research Agenda grant “AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre”, source: Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), 2018/07 – 2023/05
• Grant of 15M EUR in the Teaming for Excellence call of Horizon Europe programme of the European Commission. 2025-2030

Degrees and titles

Membership