Recording from an invited webinar titled A peek inside the proton: studying the fundamental structure of matter with the STAR experiment organized by the Polonium Fundation on 02/24/2021.
I am an Assistant Physicist at Argonne National Laboratory trying to unravel the mystery of the origin of the spin of the proton with the STAR and CLAS12 experiments and the future Electron Ion Collider facility.
My academic interest focuses on exploring the nature of the strong interaction and the way it manifests itself in the properties and interactions of hadrons. Pursuing this scientific direction, I have been studying experimentally the features of nucleons - the basic constituents of visible matter - from the source of their mass, to the spin properties.
PhD in Experimental Physics, 2016
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
MSc in Experimental Physics, 2013
Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
BSc in Physics, 2011
Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
How the spin of a nucleon arises from the spins and orbital angular momenta of quarks and gluons? This fundamental question in hadron physics remains not completely answered. Experiments with polarized proton-proton collisions can bring us closer to the comprehensive understanding of the internal spin structure of matter.
The origin of the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe is one of the grand puzzles of modern physics. Searches for Electric Dipole Moments of charged hadrons within the JEDI collaboration can shed the light on the new sources on the CP-symmetry violation which could explain the observed preponderance of matter in our world.
Central exclusive production processes are characterized by large regions in forward rapidity devoid of hadrons, and a centrally produced state, in our case pairs of charged mesons. This class of reactions measured at TeV energies has an important role in meson spectroscopy, favoring states having valence gluons, such as glueballs.
The fact that up and down quarks have slightly different masses has quite some impact on our existence, resulting in proton being heavier then neutron, and therefore stable. Net effects of quark-mass differences can be studied in hadronic reactions, e.g., in the reaction measured with the WASA-at-COSY experiment.
To push further the frontier of our knowledge, we, as a community of scientists, cannot forget how essential popularization of science is. We can build state-of-the-art experimental facilities and create revolutionary theories and ideas, but as long as we do not have a diverse generation of enthusiastic young people with a critical-thinking attitude to continue our work, we cannot expect to achieve any long-lasting progress.
STEM outreach and education is an essential part of my mission as a scientist. See below some examples of my activity.
*Promoting STEM and sharing the joy of science with students and general audience is one of my passions.
Throughout my career, I’ve been heavily involved in initiatives supporting early-career scientists.
Recording from an invited webinar titled A peek inside the proton: studying the fundamental structure of matter with the STAR experiment organized by the Polonium Fundation on 02/24/2021.
My 3-min long presentation about messy protons during the finals of the Berkeley Lab Science SLAM 2019.
During the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting 2019 I had a chance to discuss the topic of aiming for a career in science with 3 Nobel Laureates in Physics Donna Strickland, Bill D. Phillips, and Wolfgang Ketterle, fellow LiNo participant Niamh Kavanagh, and STEM career consultant Alaina G. Levine.