I am delighted to announce the opening of new PhD and Postdoctoral positions in my group, funded by the ERC Advanced Grant “De Tenebris”.
These positions are at the crossroads of general relativity, gravitational wave astrophysics, and dark matter phenomenology, and will be hosted at GRAPPA — the University’s center of excellence in gravitation and astroparticle physics, located at the lively Amsterdam Science Park.
At GRAPPA, you will join a thriving research community with strong connections to major experimental collaborations (including LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, LISA, Einstein Telescope) and the opportunity to work closely with faculty (S. Ando, D. Baumann, G. Bertone, P. Decowski, B. Freivogel, A. Heijboer, S. Markoff, P. Moesta, S. Nissanke, J. Vink, A. Watts, C. Weniger), postdocs, and students.
🔗 For more information and instructions to apply visit:
The University of Amsterdam is an equal-opportunity employer, committed to building a diverse and inclusive community. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from all qualified candidates.
I just returned from an inspiring conference in Göttingen, organised by the German Physical Society to celebrate 100 years of quantum physics.
It was in the summer of 1925 that Werner Heisenberg, seeking relief from his hay fever on the island of Helgoland, drafted the paper that changed physics forever. Back in Göttingen, together with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, he developed the first mathematical framework of the new theory — known as matrix mechanics — which marked the birth of modern quantum physics.
The conference was a chance to look back at that extraordinary moment in history, but also to see how far the field has come. We heard fascinating talks from Nobel Prize winners and leading scientists — Anton Zeilinger, Serge Haroche, Wojciech Zurek, Klaus von Klitzing, Beate Heinemann, Jürgen Renn and many others — who are pushing the frontiers of quantum physics today. A highlight was a round table I joined with Zeilinger, Zurek and Fröhlich, discussing what quantum physics has taught us — and what mysteries remain.
In my own talk, I spoke about the “quantum roots of the universe”. I began with astronomy as it stood in 1925, when Henrietta Leavitt’s work on Cepheid stars and Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the Andromeda galaxy were just emerging, at the very same time quantum mechanics was being born in Göttingen. From there, I turned to today’s puzzles: dark matter, dark energy, and the Big Bang, and I also showed how future gravitational-wave observatories may help us solve these mysteries. If you’re curious, here are my slides (link to pdf, 8Mb).
The meeting was also the occasion to pay respect to the many great scientists buried in Göttingen. The city’s cemetery is the resting place of nine Nobel laureates and other towering figures, including Max Planck, Max Born, Max von Laue, Karl Schwarzschild, David Hilbert, and many others who shaped the history of modern science.
Another memorable moment was the conference dinner at the historical Gauss Observatory, allegedly built to lure Carl Friedrich Gauss to Göttingen as director. Gauss, later celebrated as the princeps mathematicorum — the prince of mathematicians — made it his scientific home. Dining in that setting was a special way to connect with Göttingen’s outstanding scientific heritage.
A huge thank you to the organisers — Stefan Kehrein, Thomas Weitz, Johanna Stachel and many others — for a wonderful and memorable meeting.
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
