Astrocent: Poland’s new International Institute for Particle Astrophysics
Marek Konarzewski, President of the PAS (left) and Prof. Leszek Roszkowski, Director of Astrocent (right) Credits: Astrocent
Good news for particle astrophysics from Poland: a new institute devoted to the field, the International Institute for Particle Astrophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences (in short Astrocent Institute) has just been created. It began its operations on 1 March 2026, with Prof. Leszek Roszkowski as its Director. This marks an exciting milestone for our community and the beginning of a new chapter for Astrocent as a fully established international institute. It is an inspiring start to a new journey – one that will strengthen Astrocent’s scientific mission, expand technological impact, and open new opportunities for collaboration and discovery.
The Astrocent project started in 2018 within the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences as a completely new autonomous centre of excellence with the funding of nearly 38 million PLN from the Foundation for Polish Science’s International Research Agendas Programme (IRAP). Its current growth and transformation to a new institute is based on three main pillars: the Horizon Europe Teaming for Excellence project Astrocent Plus (since January 2025), which initiated the transformation, augmented by the complementary funding from the IRAP grant (since January 2026) and support from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Together, these streams amount to €30 million over six years and provide a stable base to expand our human and research infrastructure capacity, partnerships, and training – aiming at making the invisible side of the Universe to become visible, and turning discovery into a value for society. Astrocent is a new institute dedicated to studying the Universe through its most elusive messengers, like neutrinos, dark matter, and gravitational waves – in other words, the invisible Universe.
More information can be found here: https://astrocent.edu.pl/astrocent-becomes-a-new-international-institute-of-the-polish-academy-of-sciences/
Supported by: IRAP AstroCeNT (MAB/2018/7) funded by FNP from ERDF; Astrocent (FENG.02.01-IP.05-A015/25) co-financed by the European Union under FENG 2021–2027; Teaming for Excellence grant Astrocent Plus (101137080) funded by the European Union with complementary national funding from the MNiSW (MNiSW/2025/DIR/811).