My name is Rodolfo Smiljanic.
I am an associate professor at the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences, in Warsaw, Poland. I am an expert on the determination of chemical abundances from high-resolution spectra of late-type stars. My research interests include stellar evolution, Galactic stellar populations, large spectroscopic surveys, stellar nucleosynthesis, and the chemical composition of planet-host stars.
My research group is called the SAGA Team. Click below to learn more about our projects.
The Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES) is a new near-UV low- (R ~ 6 000) and medium-resolution (R ∼ 20 000) spectrograph being built for the 8-m VLT and expected to be installed in 2029. I am the Polish national co-PI in the consortium (which counts also with partners in Italy, Brazil, Germany, the UK, and Slovenia).
The Wide-field Spectroscopic Telescope (WST) will be a 12-m telescope for multi-object spectroscopy. It will have a large field-of-view (3.1 deg2) and high multiplex (>30 000), with both medium and high resolution modes and a large integral field unit. I am part of the steering committee and co-leader of the Galactic science working group.
Gaia is a scientific spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) that is making a three-dimensional map of the Milky Way, by measuring the position and motion of more than a billion stars. Since November 2022, I am member of the the Gaia Science Team (GST), a committee that advises ESA, through the Gaia Project Scientist (Dr Johannes Sahlmann), on all top-level science performance, science policy and science organization aspects of the Gaia mission.
The High-Resolution Multi-Object Spectrograph (HRMOS) is a new instrument planned for the 8-m VLT. It will combine high-resolution (R ~ 80k) with multiplex between 50 in a FoV of 25 arcmin of diameter. I am member of the core science team that is developing the science case for HRMOS (since June 2020).
The 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) is a wide-field, high-multiplex, fibre-fed, optical spectroscopic survey facility mounted on ESO's 4-metre telescope VISTA at the Paranal Observatory. I represent CAMK at the Polish Consortium that is a partner of the 4MOST consortium (since June 2026). The participation was made possible by funding from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MNiSW grant 2026/WK/06).
The paper entitled "Thorium and Europium production in the early Galaxy: Implications for nucleocosmochronology" has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Paper 2 of the "Playing CHESS with stars" series has been accepted for publication in A&A and is now available in arXiv.
Members of the SAGA Team took part in the CHASES2026 conference, between September 21 and 25, 2026, in Procchio, Elba Island, Italy.
The S2 high-resolution halo survey organized a hackaton in Heidelberg, Germany, for the analysis of the first batch of 4MOST data.
The paper "Estimating stellar metallicities from Gaia DR3 XP data using LAMOST DR10" has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Several aspects of the transformational scientific impact of WST were presented at the Expanding Horizons workshop organized by ESO in Garching bei Muenchen, Germany, between 13-17 July 2026.
Final Gaia-ESO catalogue of astrophysical parameters (DR5.1). Published on 07 Jul 2023 at the ESO data archive. A total of 114,916 stars encompassing all major components of the Milky Way.
Across the Universe is a book that presents our Institute (CAMK/PAN), its history, facilities, research groups and collaborations. Look for info of our group under "The Gaia-ESO Survey (and beyond)".
In June 2020, a short interview about CUBES was published at the news portal of the Polish Academy of Sciences (apparently no longer available) and reproduced in a few different places.
"Research should be conducted with honesty and integrity" and "All professional interactions should be conducted with consideration and respect". Between 2016-2018, I was part of the working group that elaborated the Ethics Statement and Guidelines for Good Practice of the European Astronomical Society.
COIN is a working group within the International Astrostatistics Association (IAA), that aims to foster the collaboration between astronomers, cosmologists, statisticians and machine learning experts.
The Working Group on Stellar Spectral Libraries was established within commission G5 of the IAU. The WG was tasked with carrying-on an inventory of the different attempts made to explain the discrepancies among different libraries, and summarize recommendations for actions that would improve the situation.
If you are interested in our work, feel free to get in touch.