Professor Leszek Roszkowski

Research

Biography

Professor Roszkowski is a physicist, head 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 leader of the Particle Theory Group at the National Centre for Nuclear Research in Otwock.

He obtained a 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 (habilitacja) from the Jagiellonian University in 1993. Initially employed as an assistant professor at Warsaw University, he subsequently received postdoctoral research training at CERN, University of Michigan and University of Minnesota. In 1996 he joined Lancaster University in the UK as a Lecturer (associate professor) and in 2003 he moved to Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield to assume a post of a professor and to start and lead a particle theory and cosmology group there. In 2011 he returned to Poland as a recipient of a Welcome programme award from the Foundation of Polish Science to start and lead the particle theory group at National Centre for Nuclear Research. Since 1 July 2018 his main post is that of a professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences as head of and the leader of the Particle Astrophysics Group at Astrocent.

Professor Roszkowski is the initiator of the international annual conference series COSMO and chairman of the COSMO Steering Committee. He is also a member of international advisory committees of the IDM and DARK series of conferences, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Reports on Progress in Physics. In 2013 he instigated the creation of the National Board for Particle Astrophysics gathering representatives of the field in Poland, and has been its chairman since.

Main scientific interests

Professor Roszkowski works in the fields of elementary particle physics, particle astrophysics and particle cosmology. In particle physics he is mainly interested in models of “new physics” beyond the Standard Model, like supersymmetry, especially the recently discovered Higgs boson and new yet unseen particles whose traces are searched for at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and in other collider experiments. In particle astrophysics he is mainly interested in the puzzle of the identity of dark matter and in elementary particle models of new physics providing its solution. In particle cosmology he works on implications of new physics for the properties and evolution of the early 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

Degrees and titles