In 1871 he received permission to move to Irkutsk where he met other Polish exiles, turned scholars, Aleksander Czekanowski and Benedykt Dybowski. With their help, Czekanowski is considered his mentor, he was able to join the Russian Geographical Society. He secured a job at a local museum and took part in several expeditions, gaining both experience and prominence. He took part in expeditions to the Sayan Mountains, Irkut River Valley and the Lower Tunguska River. During four expeditions (1877-1881) Czerski explored the valley of the Selenga river and published a study on Lake Baikal, explaining the origin of the lake and presenting the geological structure of East Siberia. Perhaps the most notable of these expeditions was to study of the geological structure of the coast of Lake Baikal. The result was the first geological map of that coast, for which Czerski was awarded a gold medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received three medals in total during his career. He received an international award from the University of Bologna, Italy. Czerski later put forward the idea for the development of topographic reliefs (1878) and produced one of the first analyses of the tectonics of central Asia (1886) and pioneered geomorphological evolution theory.