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Szabó Róbert

  1. Szabó Róbert

  2. Igazgató, Csillagászati és Földtudományi Kutatóközpont
  3.  
  4. R. Szabó is a world-renown expert of pulsating variable stars. He made
  5. significant contribution to the field both from the theoretical and from the
  6. observational sides. He worked in or visited several leading institutes in
  7. the world, namely University of Florida, where he conducted
  8. numerical modeling of pulsating stars as a postdoc, Kavli Institute at
  9. the University of Santa Barbara, MIT, Harvard Center for
  10. Astrophysics, and Sydney University, where he worked on
  11. asteroseismology and collaborated with the teams of space photometric
  12. missions. He is a leading figure in his field, he worked with the data of
  13. and preparation for several space photometric missions (MOST, CoRoT, Kepler/K2, TESS,
  14. PLATO), resulting in several successful observing proposals and high-profile publications.
  15. This is demonstrated by his leadership of international RR Lyrae and Cepheid Working Groups
  16. consisting of 25-50 researchers in the Kepler, K2 and TESS missions. He founded and led the
  17. Hungarian Kepler group in Konkoly Observatory. Róbert Szabó initiated the K2 RR Lyrae
  18. Survey which observes 5000 RR Lyrae stars and hundreds of Cepheids throughout the Ecliptic,
  19. creating a unique dataset, never seen before. His expertise is acknowledged by his Steering
  20. Committee membership in the Kepler and TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortia, and by Board
  21. membership of the planet-hunting and asteroseismology M3 Mission, PLATO of the European
  22. Space Agency, and as a member of the K2 Users’ Panel. He is an SDSS External Collaborator
  23. and a member of WEAVE collaboration. Dr. Szabó has was the PI of three national research
  24. grants (KTIA, OTKA, NKFIH). He organized two international conferences as SOC chair: the
  25. 5th Kepler Asteroseismic Science Consortium conference in Balatonalmádi in 2012, and an RR
  26. Lyrae conference in Visegrád in 2015, which became the first of a series of international
  27. biannual conferences on classical pulsating variable stars (2017: Niepolomice, Poland, 2019:
  28. Cloudcroft, NM, USA, 2022: La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain). Róbert Szabó has a broad
  29. range of interests. Besides photometry, space missions and pulsating stars, he worked on
  30. eclipsing binaries, exoplanets, stellar activity, asteroseismology, Solar System objects as
  31. well as transient astrophysical objects, like supernovae. His expertise in different fields and
  32. leadership skills make him an excellent candidate to lead Konkoly Observatory into a new era
  33. of astronomy, namely the big data realm and the age of synoptic sky surveys and near-field
  34. cosmology. Pulsating variable stars are at the crossroads of several astrophysical domains from
  35. stellar astrophysics to galactic populations and cosmology. Being an expert in high-precision
  36. photometry and dynamical phenomena of classical pulsating stars, R. Szabó has started to work
  37. on near-field cosmology and classification problems to apply his knowledge to use these
  38. benchmark objects as tracers of the history of Galactic formation and evolution. In 2018 he
  39. won the prestigious Lendület grant from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences making possible
  40. to elevate the astrophysical research pursued by him to a new level in terms of excellent
  41. science, cutting-edge research problems tackled, international collaborations built, synergies
  42. within the institute, and the promise of new generations of scientists raised in Hungary. He is
  43. a member of several LSST science working groups related to this proposal (Stars, Milky
  44. Way and the Local Volume, Transients and Variable Stars, Pulsating stars,
  45. Classification). He is the leader of the Hungarian in-kind contribution team to Vera Rubin
  46. Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and time.
  47.  
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  49. Konkoly Observatory (or Astronomical Observatory) of the Research Centre for Astronomy
  50. and Earth Sciences of which Dr. Szabó is the director is by far the largest astronomical
  51. institute in Hungary and is among the largest ones in Central-Eastern Europe. It has more
  52. than 60 researchers, 25% of them are from all around the world (non-Hungarians). The Institute
  53. has a vigorous research assistant and mentoring program, and a famous seminar series featuring
  54. prominent world-leading professionals. Konkoly Observatory is a host of several national and
  55. international large projects (ERC, H2020, Horizon Europe, European Space Agency).
  56. Astronomers use cutting-edge research facilities around the world, like VLT(I), VLBI, HST,
  57. JWST, Kepler, TESS, CoRoT, Spitzer, Herschel, and are members of several large
  58. astronomical projects (CHEOPS, Ariel, Gaia, PLATO, Comet interceptor, JUICE, LSST,
  59. WEAVE, LUNA, JUNA, NuGrid, Europlanet).