Research
Black holes caught in the act
I search the skies to find stars that happen to pass a bit too close to a supermassive black hole. Due to the strong gravity of the black hole, these unlucky stars get torn apart into streams of gas. The result is a sudden increase of fuel for the black hole, leading to a panchromatic flare of light. With my team of collaborators, we have collected a large sample of these rare and valuable events, and I use them to learn about the origin of black holes in the early Universe.
A second strand of my work follows high-energy neutrinos — ghostly particles that race across the Universe almost unhindered. We recently found that some of them can be produced when massive black holes feed, perhaps also during tidal disruption events. With the KM3NeT neutrino telescope and wide-field optical surveys, my group hunts for the cosmic sources of these elusive particles.
Group
Group members
Postdocs & PhD students
Former member: Niccolò Veronesi (PhD, joint with Elena Rossi) — now postdoc at ISTA, Austria.
MSc students
| Year | Name | Thesis project |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Nikolaos Ladopoulos | current |
| 2026 | Garrett Coey | current |
| 2025 | Emory Murff | Searching for black holes with quasi-periodic eruptions (current) |
| 2025 | Xueyang Hu | Black-hole masses from late-time emission of tidal disruption events |
| 2025 | Britt Ottevanger | Photometric classification of nuclear transients with machine learning |
| 2025 | Liam de Vos | Tidal disruption event rates vs. central stellar density and star-formation history |
| 2024 | Lucas Pouw | Viewing-angle constraints for stellar tidal disruption events |
| 2024 | Tim van der Vuurst | Photometric population study of ZTF nuclear transients |
| 2023 | Remon van Gaalen | Analysing tidal disruption event dust echoes |
| 2023 | Claire Olde Loohuis | Where do compact galaxies live? |
| 2022 | Thomas Boxman | Statistical significance of high-energy neutrinos from black holes (KM3NeT) |
| 2021 | Tian Li | Hubble Space Telescope observations of post-starburst galaxies |
| 2021 | Daming Yang | Host galaxies and spectral types of tidal disruption flares |
| 2021 | Ashmara Wederfoort | Radio observations of stellar tidal disruption flares |
Publications
Links to publications
Media
Selection of press coverage
- Nieuwsuur — Vera C. Rubin Observatory first light.
- Rubin Observatory reveals first images, with key contributions from Leiden
- YouTube — KIPT review talk
- “Revolution” for an alternative black-hole probe
- Tidal disruption flares write their signature in cosmic dust
- A black hole “burp”
- Scientists caught a black hole swallowing a star
- More coverage
Contact
Get in touch
Einsteinweg 55
2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands