Research

PhD research: Interstellar dust studied through X-rays.
Interstellar dust plays an important role in the processes that drive the evolution of the Interstellar Medium. The X-rays provide us with important advantages to study this dust. By using Chandra X-ray satellite data of X-ray binaries (and in the future of Astro-H) we can study the chemical composition of the dust in dense environments.
My research is done under the supervision of Dr. Elisa Costantini, professor Xander Tielens and Dr. Cor de Vries. The research is carried out at SRON and Leiden Observatory.
Besides interstellar dust, I take an interest in debris disks, planet formation and exoplanets. During my Major master project at Leiden Observatory I studied the Fomalhaut debris disk and calculated whether it is possible to observe collisions between planetesimals in the disk. The paper about this project was published in February 2014 and can be read here.

Other projects: