Welcome!
My name is Nienke van der Marel and since May 2011 I am a PhD student Astronomy at the Leiden Observatory, working with Ewine van Dishoeck on transitional disks. I finished my Master in Astronomy in April 2011, after obtaining my Bachelors in Physics and Astronomy in 2009, all at Leiden University. My main research interests are astrochemistry and instrumentation.
The main goal of my PhD is to resolve the molecular gas inside the holes of transitional disks, using millimeter interferometry with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Our ALMA Early Science proposal on IRS 48 got accepted in the highest priority, so in spring 2012 I will be working on this fabulous data set. In the mean time, I have been reading up on transitional disk studies, submitted various proposals to APEX, JCMT, SMA, VLT and Herschel to obtain additional data, attended two conferences, a summer school and fall school and went on several work visits.