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Members of the EHT Collaboration in The Netherlands

The following persons are members of the Event Horizont Telescope (EHT) Collaboration based in The Netherlands.

Associated partners of the BlackHoleCam project are listed here.

Radboud University

Brinkerink, Christiaan
PhD Student

Bronzwaer, Thomas
Thomas Bronzwaer received a BSc in computer science from Utrecht University in 2007, and a BSc in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California in 2011. At Radboud University he obtained both his MSc (2013) and PhD (2020) in Astrophysics, under the supervision of Heino Falcke. He currently works at Radboud University as a Postdoctoral researcher.

Bronzwaer studies light transport around black holes and is the lead developer of the RAPTOR computer code. This code can produce simulated observations of accreting black holes, and is used by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) in its study of supermassive black holes.

Daas,Jesse
Jesse Daas is a PhD student at Radboud University. For the internship completing his graduation he studied the inclusion of fermions in the approach to quantum gravity called Asymptotic Safety. Since then, in his PhD, he has focused on the phenomenology of alternative theories of gravity in relation to observations made by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). In his first work during the PhD he constructed solutions to the theory of Quadratic Gravity, a natural and general extension to General Relativity, and described their observational features relevant for the EHT.

Prof. dr. Falcke, Heino
Chair of the EHT Science Council, Principal Investigator BlackHoleCam Project, Professor of Astroparticle Physics and Radio Astronomy
Falcke obtained his PhD summa cum laude in 1994 from the University of Bonn. He was PostDoc at the Univ. Maryland, and staff scientist at the MPIfR in Bonn and ASTRON. Since 2007 he is full professor at Radboud University. Falcke studies super massive black holes and jets through theoretical, observational and experimental astronomy. He is a founding member of the EHT, and together with Agol and Markoff conceived of imaging Sgr A* in 2000. He was chair of the EHT science council from 2015 until 2020, and member of the Board since 2021.

Falcke secured an ERC Synergy Grant for ‘BlackHoleCam’ (2013) to create the first image of a black hole. He succeeded by presenting the iconic image on behalf of the EHT collaboration in 2019.For his pioneering work, Falcke received the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences Medal & 19th Hintze lecturer Univ. Oxford in 2019; the Einstein Medal in 2020; NAS Henry Draper Medal, CASCA Robert M. Petrie Prize Lectureship, and Amaldi Medal in 2021; along with several awards as part of the EHTC. He was appointed Knight in the order of the Netherlands Lion (2016) and is a member of the KNAW (2014).

Fraga Encinas, Raquel
Raquel Fraga Encinas graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BSc in Astrophysics from the University of New Mexico (USA) and obtained a MSc in Astronomy from the University of Maryland - College Park (USA). In 2008 she worked as a research scientist investigating the properties of quasars for the Spanish Research Council (IAA-CSIC). Then joined the X-ray group at IFCA-CSIC in Spain where she worked as a support scientist for the ATHENA mission, an X-ray space telescope to be launched by the European Space Agency. She was an editor of the viability report for ATHENA. In 2013 Fraga-Encinas joined the BlackHoleCam team at Radboud University. She is currently researching the properties of Sagittarius A* at millimetre wavelengths using modelling and observations as part of her thesis. She is a member of the EHT Speakers Bureau, Multiwavelength, Outreach, Communications and social media Working Groups. She manages social media for the BlackHoleCam collaboration.

Jimenez Rosales, Alejandra
Alejandra Jimenez Rosales is a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University. Her research focuses on the study of theoretical and observational properties of magnetised matter falling onto black holes. With the use of numerical models, she has developed a variety of tools to help understand and test the immediate environment and spacetime around these objects. She has lead a study of the temporal polarisation signatures of the black hole at the centre of the Galaxy, Sagittarius A*, at scales very close to the black hole itself, and was closely involved in the theoretical interpretation of the polarisation data taken by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration of the black hole in the galaxy M87. For her contributions to unravelling the physics behind the first polarised image of the M87 black hole, she received the EHT Collaboration Early Career award in 2021.

Dr. Klein Wolt, Marc
Klein Wolt obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from Univ. Of Amsterdam in 2004 and is co-founder and Managing Director of the Radboud Radio Lab (RRL), as well as Project Director for the Africa Millimetre Telescope. The RRL is dedicated to development of astronomical instrumentation and has experience with large instrumentation projects with partners in various countries, such as the EHT. It currently has a leading role in projects such as the NCLE radio antenna on the Chang’e 4 mission behind the Moon, the MeerLICHT (South Africa) and BlackGEM (Chile) telescopes and the radio upgrade of the Pierre Auger Observatory (Argentina).

La Bella, Noemi
Noemi La Bella obtained her BSc in Astronomy in 2017, and MSc in Astrophysics and Cosmology in 2020 at the University of Bologna. She specializes in observational astronomy at radio wavelengths. During her Master’s she worked in collaboration with the Istituto di Radioastronomia (IRA) of Bologna and spent a research period at the Leiden Observatory. Her thesis focused on the analysis of LOFAR data, finding the first evidence of shock waves in a radio mini-halo galaxy cluster.

La Bella started her PhD in Astrophysics at the Radboud University in 2020. Under the supervision of Prof. Heino Falcke she researches the collection, calibration, and imaging of supermassive black hole radio observations.

Dr. Mościbrodzka, Monika
Working Group Coordinator Polarimetry, Assistant Professor
Moscibrodzka is assistant professor in Astrophysics at Radboud University. Since completing her PhD in 2008. Her work focuses on building numerical models of black holes, accretion disks and jets. The models were used for the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) first observational data acquisition and interpretation, leading to the first image of a black hole in 2019. Mościbrodzka is EHT Polarimetry WG coordinator since 2017, where she leads efforts to measure polarization of the ring around the shadow of the black hole in galaxy M87. Under her leadership, the EHT collaboration published a first reconstruction of magnetic fields near the black hole event horizon in 2021. Mościbrodzka is member of the EHT science council since 2021, and recipient of several prizes with the EHT.

Olivares-Sanchez, Hector
Olivares obtained a BSc and a MSc in Physics from the University of Veracruz and the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute of Mexico. In 2019, he obtained his PhD from the Goethe University Frankfurt, and started as postdoctoral researcher at the Radboud University on a NOVA fellowship.

His research interests are general relativity, hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics, and especially numerical simulations in these fields. He co-developed the 'Black Hole Accretion Code' (BHAC), used to simulate the behaviour of magnetized plasma on strongly curved space-times. This code was used to create part of the simulation library of the EHT, to help interpretation of the 2019 first image of a black hole shadow.

Part of his recent research also consisted in simulating the appearance of other exotic objects, known as boson stars, if observed by the EHT.

Timmer, Sjoerd
Dr. Sjoerd T. Timmer is specialized in the development of control software and digital signal processing. He is involved in many different projects ranging from embedded firmware (for the Auger project) to monitoring and control (for EHT) and everything in between. Having a background in Theoretical Computer Science (MSc) and Artificial Intelligence (PhD) makes him well suited to the academic atmosphere in scientific research. While collaborating closely with the science teams, dr. Timmer is an engineer at heart. Fun fact: his Erd\"os number is 2.

Dr. van Rossum, Daan
Daniel van Rossum is staff scientist in Astrophysics at Radboud University. After completing his PhD in 2009 on modelling the atmospheres of transient supersoft X-ray sources and classical novae, he developed a number of numerical simulation codes used for the study of highly energenic nuclear astrophysical explosions and their ejecta.  He is an expert in high-performance computing and software architecture. In 2016, van Rossum joined the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration as software architect responsible for the design and development of a global VLBI monitoring and control system for a world-wide array of radio telescopes that performs imaging observations of black holes in the 1-mm radio wavelength range.

Vos, Jesse
Vos obtained his BSc in 2019 and MSc in 2021, both at Radboud University. His master thesis is titled "Simulated time-lags and variability of Sagittarius A*", for which he simulated both the plasma behaviour and light trajectories around the Milky Way's black hole.

In 2021, he started a PhD in Astrophysics at Radboud University. Under the supervision of Dr. Monika Mościbrodzka he continues to explore the polarimetric and emission signatures of black holes by means of numerical simulations. In 2021 Vos acquired a much sought-after computing grant for 4.5M CPUH on national computing facilities from the Dutch Research Council.

Wondrak, Michael
Michael F. Wondrak, a Radboud Excellence Fellow at Radboud University Nijmegen, investigates black holes and event horizons at classical and quantum level. His focus is on black hole shadows and Hawking radiation which may be crucial to uncover the fundamental nature of gravity. With observations by the Event Horizon Telescope, he tests promising (quantum) gravity theories beyond Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

He earned the Master’s degree in Physics with distinction from Goethe University Frankfurt. In his PhD work in Frankfurt, Wondrak demonstrated that the concept of black holes can be treated as a versatile theoretical tool to address central questions in physics, from quantum gravity and string theory to the far-from-equilibrium properties of nuclear matter. Wondrak received several awards including the Giersch Excellence Grant in 2019 and 2016, the Loulakis Prize in 2014, and a scholarship by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. His contributions to international conferences were honoured with the Karl Schwarzschild Prize at the 3rd Karl Schwarzschild Meeting in 2017 and the Flash Talk Prize at the Quark Matter conference in 2019.

Yfantis, Aristomenis
Yfantis obtained his BSc. in Physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) in 2019 as second of his class, and his MSc. in Astro and Particle Physics from University of Tübingen in 2021, first in his class.
His scientific interests revolve around gravity, black hole physics, physics of accretion and numerical methods in physics, with particular interest in GRMHD simulations beyond Kerr. From calculations of the radiative efficiency and reflection spectrum of disks, he has attempted to identify variations between different spacetimes. In 2021 Yfantis started his PhD studies at Radboud University and joined the EHT. He currently works ways to extract the most information regarding the accretion disk around black holes.

Dr. Young, André
Young completed his BEng in Electrical & Electronic Engineering with Computer Science in 2005, and MScEng (Electronic Engineering) in 2007 from Stellenbosch University. He obtained his PhD in 2013 and was appointment postdoctoral researcher at Stellenbosch University. Young’s research focus is on antenna gain calibration techniques in radio astronomy. From 2015 to 2018 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, working on digital systems and software for the EHT and Submillimeter Array. Since 2018 he is a postdoctoral researcher at Radboud University, where he currently works as systems engineer for the EHT and the Africa Millimetre Telescope (AMT) project.

Leiden University

Impellizzeri, Violette
Impellizzeri is the Program manager of Allegro. Her research is centred on VLBI studies of the molecular gas surrounding black holes and spectral line observations. She was involved in the early commissioning of the ALMA telescope, in Chile, from 2011-2014, and was the “friend of VLBI” at ALMA. She is a member of the EHT. Besides her expertise in mmm-wave astronomy, she provides key expertise in telescope operations and user support. Allegro is the Dutch ALMA Regional Centre Node located within the Leiden Observatory and offers user support to the ALMA community in the Netherlands related to data reduction and analysis, archive research, computing resources, but it is also a centre for sub-mm expertise and studies. ALMA-VLBI is one of the expertise areas that are covered by this group.

University of Amsterdam

Chatterjee, Koushik
Chatterjee completed his PhD with Prof. Sera Markoff and is currently a Fellow in the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University. His work focuses on developing large-scale numerical simulations to investigate the complex physics of black hole accretion and jet dynamics and interpret the observed multiwavelength electromagnetic emission from astrophysical black holes. He is a member of the EHT Collaboration and is a coordinator of the eDF theory working group. He contributed numerous black hole simulations, images and spectra to the EHT theory effort (Paper V) both in 2019 and 2022.

Prof. dr. Markoff, Sera
Member EHT Science Council, Professor of Theoretical High Energy Astrophysics

Markoff is professor of theoretical high-energy astrophysics at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, and founding member of the Gravitation and AstroParticle Physics Amsterdam (GRAPPA) Centre of Excellence, at the University of Amsterdam. She investigates the extreme processes occurring when material accretes onto compact objects such as black holes, including particle acceleration, and the subsequent emission across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio to gamma-ray. Markoff has won numerous awards including the top Dutch Research Council personal career grants VIDI and VICI, as well as being named Fellow of the American Physical Society for her work on black holes. She is also a member of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. Markoff is a member of the EHT Collaboration and currently serves as vice-chair of the EHT Science Council, and was the only European panel member atthe EHT press conference in Washington in 2019. Markoff was part of the writing team for Paper I of the Sgr A* release in 2022, and co-coordinates the EHT Multi-wavelength Science Working Group that carried out the accompanying multi-wavelength campaign from ground and space (Paper II). Her group (including then PhD student Koushik Chatterjee, Dr. Gibwa Musoke, and Dr. DooSoo Yoon) also contributed to the modelling in Paper V.

Mulaudzi, Wanga
Mulaudzi is currently doing her PhD at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam. Her studies focus on modelling the spectra of black holes using multi-wavelength data. Such studies will aid in understanding feedback mechanisms from active galactic nuclei (AGN), for example, their powerful jets and jet origins. Her work includes studies of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) data, as she is also a member of the EHT collaboration. She also has interests in big data analysis, as she was a member of the MeerKAT International GHz Tiered Extragalactic Exploration (MIGHTEE) HI survey team

Musoke, Gibwa
Musoke is a NOVA Virtual Institute of Accretion (VIA) postdoctoral fellow at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy at the University of Amsterdam. Using numerical simulations, she investigates black hole accretion, alongside relativistic jet launching and propagation in order to understand how black holes influence the evolution of their large-scale environments and how some of the emission signatures we observe are connected to processes occurring in the accretion disk. Musoke is a member of the EHT and she conducts general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics (GRMHD) simulations of black hole accretion in the Simulation and Theory working group of the EHT.

Dr. Porth, Oliver
Porth is assistant professor in computational astrophysical fluid dynamics at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy / Amsterdam. After his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) on formation and evolution of relativistic jets with Dr. Christian Fendt at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy / Heidelberg (2011), he has taken on postdoctoral positions at Leeds/UK (with Prof. Serguei Komissarov), Leuven/Belgium and Frankfurt/Germany.

He has worked on a variety of subjects including general relativistic accretion, jet formation- and stability and dynamics of pulsar wind nebulae (PWN) and is most reknown for the solution of the long-standing "sigma-Problem" in PWN. He is lead developer of community codes for astrophysical fluid dynamics and has led community wide code comparison efforts. Oliver Porth is active contributor to the theoretical simulations for the EventHorizonTelescope collaboration.

Drs. Sosapanta Salas, Leon
Sosapanta is a first-year Ph.D. student in Sera Markoff’s group at the Anton Pannekoek Institute of the University of Amsterdam. He is working on theoretical modeling of black hole accretion using General Relativistic Magneto Hydrodynamic simulation (code H-AMR). He aims to perform comparisons between simulations conducted at low, standard, and unprecedented high resolutions, aiming to answer how well simulations agree and to determine the impact of numerical resolution on physical variables. He is a member of the EHT collaboration and currently participating in the Theory and Gravity working group for the M87 2018 data.

Yoon, Doosoo
Doosoo is a former postdoc in Prof. Sera Markoff’s group at the Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy. He investigates the effects of electron microphysics on the dynamical evolution of accretion flow around a black hole using large-scale numerical simulations. As a member of the EHT Collaboration, he contributed to examining black hole models in Paper V by postprocessing the simulated results to obtain synthetic images and spectra.

University of Groningen

Dr. Hesper, Ronald
Assistant Professor

Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC (JIVE)

Dr. van Bemmel, Ilse
Van Bemmel is an expert on calibration of radio interferometry, and the design of calibration software and verification. She received her PhD from Groningen University, worked at Space Telescope Science Institute (USA) as ESA Fellow, Leiden University, and ASTRON. She joined JIVE in 2014, where she holds a staff position. She has led the modelling and first designs of a calibration strategy for LOFAR, and subsequently worked on commissioning, science
verification, and first results for the LOFAR Surveys Key Project. At JIVE, she was key to the implementation of new VLBI calibration functionality in the CASA software. She co-led the EHT calibration working group from 2015 until late 2020 and coordinated the development of a CASA pipeline for EHT. She is a strong advocate for diversity and currently serves as EHTC ombudsperson

Dr. Kettenis, Mark
Software Project Scientist

Prof. dr. van Langevelde, Huib Jan
Publication Working Group Coordinator, Senior Scientist and Professor of
Galactic Astronomy. 
Van Langevelde is director of the EHT, professor at Leiden university (Galactic Radio Astronomy) and chief scientist at JIVE, which he led as director from 2007-2017. He specialises in radio interferometry of masers, evolved stars in the Galactic centre, and astrometry. As JIVE head of software, he managed several software projects that enhanced global VLBI operations. Facilitated by European funding, the projects that he managed introduced real-time VLBI and Python-based radio astronomy processing. When he became director of JIVE, it transformed into a European entity (ERIC) under his leadership. Van Langevelde is also affiliated with UNM, Albuquerque, USA.

Dr. Small, Des
Scientific Software Engineer, Des Small has been a scientific programmer at JIVE since 2006, and is the primary author of the CASA fringefit callibration task used in the EHT project. As a non-astronomer of many years' standing, he holds a PhD in computational fluid mechanics from Southampton University and has previously worked on vacuum cleaner cyclone flows at Dyson and the application of dynamical systems theory to ocean flows at Bristol University.

Astron

Prof. Dr. Dempsey, Jessica
Dempsey is the Director of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, ASTRON. She spent over a decade in Hawaii as Deputy Director of the JCMT. Dempsey has a background in radio interferometry, with a scientific focus is on wide-field, transient surveys of the galaxy at radio wavelengths and on the frontiers of big data science pipelines for astronomy. The new director has a passionate commitment to creating greater diversity, equity and opportunity at all levels of astronomy and to enhancing opportunities for girls to become future leaders in science and technology careers.