Delighted to be among the recipients of an European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant, and honoured to be in the company of so many outstanding researchers at University of Amsterdam and from across Europe.

My project “De Tenebris” (“On Darkness”) will explore a new way to detect dark matter – the elusive substance comprising most of the Universe’s mass – by “listening” to ripples in spacetime called gravitational waves. The basic idea is simple: when two black holes spiral together and merge, they send out gravitational waves that we can detect here on Earth. If dark matter is present around those black holes, it can subtly change the shape and timing of those waves.

My team will develop models and computer codes to predict exactly how different types of dark matter would alter a black hole merger signal, and to identify key waveform signatures that reveal dark matter’s nature, preparing the ground for discovery with future space interferometers like European Space Agency – ESA‘s LISA.

I’m deeply grateful to my research group and collaborators at GRAPPA, at the UvA Institute of Physics, and beyond. This achievement would have been impossible without you.

If you’re a postdoc or early-career researcher looking for your next challenge, keep an eye on our openings this Fall—several positions will be posted with applications due at the end of November.

Former UvA postdoctoral researcher Philippa (Pippa) Cole is one of the six winners of the XXIII Italian edition of the L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” Young Talents Italy prize. The jury, made up of a panel of distinguished scientists and chaired by Prof. Lucia Votano, Affiliated Research Manager at the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, selected the six most deserving female researchers for their projects after careful evaluation.

Pippa joined my and Samaya Nissanke’s research group in 2020 as a postdoc. In Amsterdam, she established herself as a leading expert on the interplay between dark matter, black holes, and gravitational waves. She has produced a series of important results that will have a lasting impact on the field.

For example, as the lead author of the recent Nature Astronomy paper “Distinguishing Environmental Effects on Binary Black Hole Gravitational Waveforms,” she, together with Bertone and members of his research team at UvA, demonstrated that gravitational-wave observations with future interferometer LISA can uniquely reveal the signatures of different dark matter environments around black holes.

Since 2023, Pippa has held a research fellowship at the University of Milano-Bicocca. The prize awards her €20 000 to support her research.

Congratulations Pippa! Very proud and happy for you!

Gimmy Tomaselli, a brilliant PhD student who worked at GRAPPA under the joint supervision of D. Baumann and me, has been awarded the 2025 Committee for Astroparticle physics in the Netherlands (CAN) Thesis Prize. This prestigious prize recognizes the best astroparticle physics thesis defended at Dutch universities each year.

Tomaselli completed his PhD thesis “Gravitational Atoms and Black Hole Binaries” and obtained his PhD at the UvA in October 2024. During his four-year doctoral project, he developed novel theoretical models for detecting ultralight dark matter. His work combined analytical and numerical calculations to predict the imprints of light particles produced by black holes through a process known as ‘superradiance’ on the gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes.

Following his PhD, Tomaselli has taken up a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, for which he received a Rubicon grant. At IAS he will continue exploring the rich interplay between fundamental theory and observational prospects for dark matter, collaborating with leading researchers in both particle physics and cosmology.

Congrats Gimmy!

Full press release here: https://iop.uva.nl/content/news/2025/06/giovanni-maria-tomaselli-wins-2025-can-thesis-prize.html

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with journalist Huma Khamis on the RTS podcast Micro-sciences — a wide-ranging conversation (in French) about the concept of infinity, at the crossroads of physics, cosmology, and philosophy.

Listen here: https://www.rts.ch/…/micro-sciences-l-infini-c-est-par…

Many thanks to Huma and the RTS team for the thoughtful exchange.

New book review: my book review of Dan Hooper’s “Particle Cosmology and Astrophysics” is now live in CERN Courier. The book provides a concise introduction to key topics in particle‐physics, cosmology and astrophysics, alongside key advances in the last three decades—from CMB anisotropies and dark‐matter searches to the rise of neutrino and gamma‐ray astrophysics.

Read it here: https://cerncourier.com/a/particle-cosmology-and-astrophysics/