Browse completed national and EU-funded research projects carried out at Astrocent, related to astrophysics, photonics, and cryogenic technologies.
Past grants completed at Astrocent
Probes of new physics and technological advancements from particle and gravitational wave physics experiments. A cooperative Europe – United States – Asia effort (MNiSW PMW)
Funding basis: Contract 6268/H2020/2025/2 with the Ministry of Science and Higher Education
Project budget total: PLN 248 177,00
MNiSW financing: PLN 100 174,00 (89,9% of national project funding)
Duration: 01.01.2025 – 28.02.2026
Date of signing the financing agreement: 30.12.2025
Project description: The PROBES project aims to strengthen international collaboration and knowledge transfer between academic and non‑academic partners from Europe and the USA in the field of advanced technologies used in fundamental physics research. It focuses on developing researchers’ competencies and exchanging know‑how in five key areas: gravitational‑wave astronomy and interferometer technology, radiation detection and advanced measurement techniques, radiation‑ and magnetic‑field‑resistant electronics, modern photodetectors and calibration systems, as well as radiation simulations and computational infrastructure.
Leader: Leszek Roszkowski
Probes of new physics and technological advancements from particle and gravitational wave physics experiments. A cooperative Europe – United States – Asia effort’ (MSCA – RISE)
Funding basis: Contract no. 101003460 – PROBES
Financing institution: Research Executive Agency (REA),
Programme: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions: Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE)
Total budget: PLN 109 200,00
Duration: 01.03.2022 – 28.02.2026
Date of signing the financing agreement: 03.12.2020
Project description: PROBES will explore elusive aspects of the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics and the Standard Model of Cosmology (SMC) and search for new physics exploiting particle accelerators and gravitational wave (GW) interferometers. Several lowenergy aspects of quark-gluon interactions still remain a challenge, like the mechanism of color confinement, which accounts for 99% of the mass of standard matter of the Universe, and the equation of state (EoS) of ultradense matter, fundamental for the study of compact stars. Astrophysical observations and particle physics anomalies point towards the existence of Dark Matter (DM). Major efforts are dedicated to the search for galactic DM or hints at particle accelerators. The observation of neutrino oscillations established a picture consistent with the mixing of three neutrino flavours in three mass eigenstates and small mass differences. Experimental anomalies suggest the existence of sterile neutrino states participating in the mixing and not coupling to the SM gauge bosons. Lepton mixings and massive neutrinos offer a gateway to deviations from the SM in the lepton sector including Charged Lepton Flavour Violation. GWs provide alternative ways to study these phenomena. They could probe the existence of primordial black-holes as a possible DM candidate, test the SMC through new measurements of the Universe expansion rate, and the neutron star EoS through the “tidal” perturbations during a binary neutron star merger. Joint EM-GW-neutrino observations could probe astrophysical sources and constrain physics under extreme conditions of electromagnetic and gravitational fields. We are leading the development, commissioning and data analysis of cutting-edge experiments to answer these questions. This requires maximum knowledge sharing and technological advancements with applications also outside fundamental physics. The collaboration with world-class laboratories in US and Asia will open new career prospects for the participants.
Leader: Leszek Roszkowski
DRD1 Conference Warsaw (MNiSW, Wektory Nauki)
Funding basis: Contract no. WNK/SP/0385/2025/01 (Programme “Wektory Nauki”)
Financing institution: Ministry of Science and Higher Education
Total budget: PLN 204 440,00
Co-funding: PLN 96 640,00
Duration: 1.08-31.12.2025
Date of signing the financing agreement: 12.12.2025
Project description: The aim of the project was to organize the 6th DRD1 Collaboration Meeting – a week-long conference serving as a platform for the presentation and exchange of research results and developments in radiation detector technologies within the international DRD1 network (CERN Experimental Physics, in line with the detector R&D roadmap of the European Committee for Future Accelerators, ECFA). The meeting took place in Warsaw on 6–10 October 2025, for the first time outside CERN, and was hosted by Astrocent (NCAC PAS).
Leader: Andre Filipe Ventura Cortez
Determining the sensitivity of the ARGO, DarkSide-20k, and DEAP-3600 experiments to supermassive charged gravitinos (Miniatura 8)
Funding basis: Decision of the Director of NCN no. DEC-2024/08/X/ST2/00430
Financing institution: National Science Centre (Miniatura 8)
Total budget: 47 300,00 PLN
Duration: 22.08.2024-5.12.2025
Date of signing the financing agreement: 22.08.2024
Project description: The project explores the potential of large underground liquid-argon detectors to search for supermassive, electrically charged gravitons as dark matter candidates. It will estimate signals and backgrounds for DEAP-3600, DarkSide-20k and ARGO, assess detector sensitivity, and develop tools for future experimental searches.
Leader: Michał Olszewski
Detection and denoising of Gravitational Wave sources in Einstein Telescope using deep learning (Preludium 22)
Funding basis: Contract no. UMO-2023/49/N/ST9/01287 with the National Science Centre
Financing institution: National Science Centre (Preludium 22)
Total budget: 68,275.00 PLN
Duration: 23.01.2024-22.01.2025
Date of signing the financing agreement: 23.01.2024
Project description: The project develops automated machine-learning tools to detect and denoise gravitational-wave signals from binary black holes and neutron stars in Einstein Telescope data. Using convolutional neural networks and denoising autoencoders, it aims to deliver reliable software for efficient signal recovery and future parameter estimation.
Leader: Wathela Alhassan
AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre (International Research Agendas)
Funding basis: Contract no. MAB/2018/7 with the Foundation for Polish Science
Financing institution: Foundation for Polish Science
Total budget: 38 000 000,00 PLN
Duration: 03.07.2018-31.12.2023
Date of signing the financing agreement: 03.07.2018
Project description: The “AstroCeNT: Particle Astrophysics Science and Technology Centre” project is implemented as part of the International Research Agendas programme of the Foundation for Polish Science, supported by the European Regional Development Fund under Smart Growth Operational Programme (SG OP), Priority Axis 4: Increasing the research potential, Measure 4.3: International Research Agendas (IRAs).
The grant, awarded to Astrocent main applicant Leszek Roszkowski and co-applicant Tomasz Bulik, provides funding of nearly 38 MPLN (nearly 9 M€) for the first 5 years. AstroCeNT was launched on 1 July 2018 as an autonomous unit of the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences, with the initial funding of nearly 38 MPLN (nearly 9 M€) for the first 5 years.
Leader: Leszek Roszkowski
Novel technologies for dark matter search and frontier astroparticle physics experiments – DarkWave (Horizon 2020)
Funding basis: Contract no. 952480 — DarkWave — H2020-WIDESPREAD-2018-2020 / H2020-WIDESPREAD-2020-5; Horyzont 2020, WIDESPREAD-05-2020 – Twinning
Financing institution: Research Executive Agency (REA)
Total budget: 879 812.50 EUR
Duration: 1.10.2020-30.09.2023
Date of signing the financing agreement: 02.07.2020
Project description: Almost all energy stored in our universe exists as forms of dark matter and dark energy, yet we know very little about either. It appears to interact mainly through the force of gravity and is likely composed of elementary particles that we have not yet identified. Experiments resolving the mysterious nature of dark matter take us beyond current descriptions of elementary particles and the forces that govern their interactions. The EU-funded DarkWave project is hot on the trail of promising dark matter candidates, Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), whose direct detection would revolutionise our understanding of the universe. It will also apply technologies developed for this purpose to other key physics topics: gravitational waves and properties of neutrinos.
Leader: Marcin Kuźniak
Methods of reconstructing signals from seismic detector networks (Miniatura 6)
Funding basis: Decision no. DEC-2022/06/X/ST10/00129 of the Director of the National Science Centre
Financing institution: National Science Centre (Miniatura 6)
Total budget: 48 048.00 PLN
Duration: 08.07.2022-07.07.2023
Date of signing the financing agreement: 23.06.2022
Leader: Marek Cieślar
Environmental acoustic interference studies using an infrasound microphone array (Miniatura 6)
Funding basis: Decision no. DEC-2022/06/X/ST7/00249 of the Director of the National Science Centre
Financing institution: National Science Centre (Miniatura 6)
Total budget: 49 742.00 PLN
Duration: 06.08.2022-05.08.2023
Date of signing the financing agreement: 22.07.2022
Project description: This project develops a mobile array of 64 infrasound microphones to locate and model low-frequency environmental noise at the Virgo gravitational-wave detector. Real-time acoustic beamforming will enable more precise noise reduction, improve detector sensitivity and support future technologies for the Einstein Telescope.
Leader: Mariusz Suchenek
Development of the concept of a new type of GEM detector for dark matter and neutrino research (Miniatura 3)
Funding basis: Decision no. DEC-2019/03/X/ST2/01560 of the Director of the National Science Centre
Financing institution: National Science Centre (Miniatura 3)
Total budget: 47.850,00 PLN
Duration: 19.12.2019-18.12.2020
Date of signing the financing agreement:
Project description: Dark matter and the Universe’s matter–antimatter asymmetry remain major open questions in physics. This project develops a novel detector for noble-gas time projection chambers, enabling efficient simultaneous readout of light and electric charge for next-generation experiments in dark matter and neutrino physics.
Leader: Marcin Kuźniak