dr inż. Wojciech Gajek - Instytut Geofizyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk

Education:

II.2020: Ph.D. diploma at Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences – Poland
IX.2014: Master diploma at Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection – AGH University of Science and Technology – Poland
I.2013: Bachelor diploma at Faculty of Geology, Geophysics and Environmental Protection – AGH University of Science and Technology – Poland

Employment:

I.2020-XII.2020: Postdoctoral researcher – ETH Zurich – Switzerland
III.2021-now: Assistant Professor – Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences – Poland

Research interests:

Cryoseismology – studies seismic signals generated by ice (glaciers, ice sheets, frozen ground) to understand how ice moves, cracks, and responds to climate change.
Environmental seismology – uses ambient, natural seismic vibrations to monitor environmental processes like permafrost degradation, landslides,
Microseismicity – focuses on very small earthquakes that are too weak to be felt by humans but reveal information about the subsurface, for example, active tectonics or hydro-fracturing
Seismic Anisotropy – determines how seismic wave velocity varies depending on the direction of propagation, and may inform about structural and mechanical parameters of the subsurface (e.g., crack density)

Grants and projects:

2025-2028 Building Robust and Efficient Workflows for Distributed Acoustic Sensing to Enhance Comprehension of the Dynamics of Hansbreen Glacier, Project Leader, funded by NCN
2023-2025 Fibre-optic sensing towards the improvement of environmental monitoring in Svalbard, FROST – Project leader, funded by SIOS (Norway)
2022-2023 Svalbard Strategic Grant: Coordinating efforts to establish distributed acoustic sensing for cryoseismological research in Svalbard – Project leader on polish side, funded by Research Council of Norway
2017-2018 Seismic monitoring of Hans glacier (Svalbard) using dedicated local network – Project Leader – internal IG PAS funding

Publications:

Gajek, W., Luckman, A., Harcourt, W. D., Pearce, D. M., & Hann, R., 2025. Utilising seismic station internal GPS for tracking surging glacier sliding velocity. Journal of Glaciology, 71, e40.
Gajek W., Gräff D., Hellmann S., Rampel A., Walter F., 2021. Diurnal expansion and contraction of englacial fracture networks revealed by seismic shear wave splitting, Commun Earth Environ 2, 209.
Gajek, W. & Malinowski, M., 2021. Errors in microseismic events locations introduced by neglecting anisotropy during velocity model calibration in downhole monitoring, Journal of Applied Geophysics, 184.
Köhler A., Gajek W., Malinowski M., Schweitzer J., Majdanski M., Geissler W. H., Chamarczuk M., Wuestefeld A., 2020. Seismological monitoring of Svalbard’s cryosphere: current status and knowledge gaps (CRYOSEIS), SESS report 2019, Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, Longyearbyen, pp. 137 – 159
Gajek, W., Trojanowski, J., Malinowski, M., Jarosiński, M., Riedel, M., 2018. Results of the downhole microseismic monitoring at a pilot hydraulic fracturing site in Poland, part I: events location and stimulation performance, Interpretation, 6(3), SH39-SH48. doi.org/10.1190/INT-2017-0205.1
Gajek, W., Malinowski, M., Verdon, J., 2018. Results of the downhole microseismic monitoring at a pilot hydraulic fracturing site in Poland, part II: shear wave splitting analysis, Interpretation, 6(3), SH49-SH58. doi.org/10.1190/INT-2017-0207.1
Gajek, W., Trojanowski, J., Malinowski, M., 2017. Automating long-term glacier dynamics monitoring using single-station seismological observations and fuzzy logic classification: a case study from Spitsbergen, Journal of Glaciology, 63, 581-592

Monographs:

My Ph.D. thesis:
Gajek W., (2021), Anisotropy estimation of lower Paleozoic shales from Northern Poland using microseismic data, Publs. Inst. Geoph. PAS 432 (B-43), 94 pp., DOI: 10.25171/InstGeoph_PAS_Publs-2021-001.