I am a researcher at the Prague Relativistic Astrophysics Group of the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, focusing on observations of black holes across the mass scale, including the stellar-mass black holes in X-ray Binaries (XRB) to super-massive ones in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Besides the research, I am the contact person for space projects at the Astronomical Institute and responsible mainly for the Czech participation in the ESA large missions LISA and newATHENA.

In my research, I mainly employ X-ray observations to study radiation coming from the closest neighbourhood to a black hole where the space-time is curved due to extremely strong gravity and frame-dragging in the case of a rotating black hole. The measurements of the black hole's angular momentum (spin) via X-ray spectroscopy were the main subject of my PhD Thesis, defended at Charles University in Prague in 2010. From 2011 to 2013, I worked as a Research Fellow at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) of the European Space Agency (ESA) near Madrid (Spain), where I expanded my research interest to study the AGN structure including not only the innermost accretion disc but also the broad line region and warm absorbers. Using the large data set of XMM-Newton observations, I studied the AGN spectral states with the analogy to XRB. Our work has suggested that the presence of AGN relativistic jets is related to the accretion flow properties, similar to XRB. I have also investigated highly star-forming compact dwarf galaxies, Green Peas and Blueberries, that resemble the properties of the first galaxies formed in the Universe. They also might host an intermediate-mass black hole, a precursor for the supermassive black hole. Most recently, I have focused on spectro-polarimetric studies of XRBs using data from the X-ray polarimetry mission IXPE. For more information about my scientific work, you may find my publications here: Papers 

Students:

Barbora Adamcova (Ph.D.)

Maimouna Brigitte (Ph.D.)
Jiří Linda (Bc)