I am a currently a postdoctoral research assistant in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. My research here is focussed on the properties of accretion discs in X-ray binary systems.

Previously, I was a SNSF postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratoire Univers et Théories ( LUTH ) of the Observatoire de Paris in Meudon. There I worked with with E. Gourgoulhon and T. Paumard in the field of numerical relativity. We were (and still are) testing General Relativity by imaging accretion flows around compact objects of various gravity theories. THIS is an example of how an optically thin and geometrically tick gas torus around the Galactic supermassive black hole looks like in Horava-Lifshitz geometry (Ray-tracing code: GYOTO , figure credits: O.Straub).

Until 2011 I was a Ph.D. student of professor M. Abramowicz at the N. Copernicus Astronomical Center (CAMK) in Warsaw where I worked on different projects related to the black hole spin. First, I did analytical, general relativistic studies on epicyclic oscillations of non-slender accretion tori around Kerr black holes to describe high-frequency millisecond X-ray variability that are observed in many X-ray transient sources, including Ultra-Luminous X-ray sources (ULXs). Second, I analysed continuum X-ray spectra of galactic and extra-galactic black hole binaries to understand the effect of advection in luminous accretion discs and measure the black hole spin.

research interests

black hole physics, compact objects in binary systems, accretion discs, ULXs, millisecond pulsars, the Galactic centre...