Prior to coming to Leiden I was on the faculty at the Kapteyn Institute in Groningen (1994-2002), a Hubble Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (1991-1994), a postdoc at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (1989-1991), a corporal in the Belgian Air Force (1989), and a PhD student at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK (1985-1988).
As part of my research, I have been involved in two instrument-based
projects: the OmegaCAM
wide-field camera, and the Planetary Nebulae Spectrograph.
OmegaCAM became operational in September 2011 on the VLT Survey
Telescope, a 2.6m telescope on ESO's
Paranal observatory in Chile. It
is an optical CCD mosaic camera that can image a square degree with
0.2 arcsec pixels, and that delivers exquisite image quality over the
full field. With it, my team and I carried out the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), mapping 1350
square degrees of extragalactic sky in multiple colours, with the aim
to study the distribution of dark matter and the nature of dark
energy, principally through the technique of gravitational lensing. Please visit the website to see our latest results!
You can scroll and zoom through the entire survey in the panel below (or visit a dedicated web page here). Be warned, the survey contains some 50 million galaxies!
A complete list of my publications, from the SAO/NASA Astrophysics
Data System (ADS), can be found
here.
spring 2019, 2020, 2021: MSc core course "Large Scale Structure and Galaxy Formation"
spring 2018: Video class for prospective BSc students
spring 2016, 2017: BSc Research Project coordinator
autumn 2015: Classes on cosmology for high school physics teachers
2014: Coordinator Lapptop astronomy programme for high school students
2013-2015: study advisor 1st year students
Autumn 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013: MSc core course
"Origin and Evolution of the Universe"
Autumn 2009: MSc optional course
"Gravitational Lensing"Onderwijs / Teaching
autumn 2020: MSc course on "Gravitational Lensing" (with Alessandro Sonnenfeld and Henk Hoekstra)
2004-2006: BSc course "Inleiding Astrofysica"
2003: BSc course "Modern Onderzoek in de Sterrenkunde"
During my time at the Kapteyn Institute, Univ. of Groningen:
1999-2001: BSc course "Modern Onderzoek in de Sterrenkunde"
1996-1998: BSc course "Sterrenkunde 1A"
1995/7/9: MSc course "Stellar dynamics"
8-lecture course on gravitational lensing, at Univ. of Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia, August 2014 can be seen here.
A webinar to the LIneA institute in Brazil (Octover 2016) about the first cosmology results from the KiDS survey can be viewed here.
I am currently the chair of the NWO Science domain advisory committee for astronomy, and serve on the institute advisory board of ASTRON, and the Fachbeirat of the Max-Planck Inst. for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE). Since 2007 I have been a member of the Dutch Committee for Astronomy (NCA), now known as the "Astronomy Council".
Previously I served as member of the ESO Council, and the SRON board.
From 2008 to 2017 I was a board member of the Koninklijke Maatschappij voor Natuurkunde "Diligentia" in the Hague, which organises lectures for the broader public by professional scientists.
In 2016 I was elected a member of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen in Haarlem.
In November 2019 I started a sabbatical in London at the Imperial Centre for Interference and Cosmology, but this was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In 2022 our Dark universe Science Collaboration (DUSC) was awarded a 3Meuro grant by NWO to study cosmology and galaxy formation with the upcoming Euclid space telescope.
Room : 441 Telephone : 5848 E-mail :