Projects
Search for Interactions of Top Quarks with Dark Matter with the CMS Experiment at the LHC. Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Searching for Dark Matter with the CMS detector at the Current and Future Large Hadron Collider Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Dark matter in dwarf galaxies Ghent University
Dwarf galaxies hold the key to solve some of the most important questions in current extragalactic astronomy regarding galaxy environment, star formation and dark matter. Through stellar population analysis, dynamical modelling and numerical simulations we will examine the controlling mechanism of star formation, the role of the dark matter, the dwarf dark-matter halo occupancy and the physical processes behind the observed scaling ...
Asteroseismic Tests of Stellar Evolution, Dark Matter, and the Gravitational Constant KU Leuven
The asteroseismic observations collected by space observatories like the NASA Kepler and TESS missions probe the conditions inside of bright nearby stars and thus facilitate tests to numerous fundamental theories. My proposal is to advance our knowledge of fundamental physics by making use of these observations to conduct three such tests: first, to assess whether the internal structures of these stars are in agreement with the predictions ...
Dynamical structure and dark matter content of galaxies 7 billion years ago with the Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census survey. Ghent University
I will use the ground-breaking spectroscopic LEGA-C survey to understand the star-forming phase of disk galaxies at a look back time of 7 billion years by studying the dynamics of ionised gas. The new data is of unprecedented high quality for its sample size of thousands of galaxies and contains for the first time detailed information about the dynamics, ages and chemical composition of the stellar content. I will constrain, for the first ...
Dark matter in spiral galaxies MOUTH. Ghent University
Identification of a new antifungal compound with a novel mode-of-action derived from microbial dark matter KU Leuven
Mortality associated with fungal infections already exceeds malaria
casualties threefold. Due to an ever-rising immunocompromised
population, these figures will only continue to increase. Being
eukaryotic, fungi share many biological processes with humans,
making toxicity a huge issue during drug development. Currently,
there are only five antifungal drug classes available. Each class with
their ...
Sabbatical Thomas Van Riet: A new perspective on the nature of dark energy KU Leuven
The operation of the universe remains a mystery on the very largest scale (cosmology) and the smallest scale (elementary particle physics). This is not a stumbling block to the development of most science and technology, because it focuses on the length scales between the largest and the smallest. However, to get an answer to the fundamental questions it is crucial to understand the extremes. What are the fundamental building blocks ...
Galaxies’ Anatomy - panchromatic SED modelling of spatially resolved galaxies in the local Universe Ghent University
Galaxies are an amalgamation of several components (dark matter, stars, gas, and dust), constantly interacting with one another. This interaction is imprinted on the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a given galaxy. Through a detailed study of the panchromatic SED we can shed light on the astrophysical processes that regulate galaxy evolution. However, the current SED modeling approaches come with many caveats and limitations. One of the ...