Jelle Aalbers appointed assistant professor at Cosmic Frontier VSI

Jelle Aalbers was appointed as assistant professor with an education profile at the VSI on October 1, 2023 in the Cosmic Frontier.

Jelle works on the search for dark matter: the mysterious substance beyond the standard model that holds our universe together. He hopes to catch dark matter bouncing off xenon atoms in large detectors deep underground beneath the Italian Apennines. For this Jelle works with the international XENON collaboration through the VSI's partnership with Nikhef. He is also interested in cosmic probes of dark matter, such as detecting dark halos with gravitational lensing.

Since Jelle specializes in statistical data analysis and machine learning, he will teach courses on computational methods and applied deep learning besides traditional courses in the physics programme.

Jelle studied in Utrecht and Cambridge, received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2018, and worked at Stockholm University and Stanford University before coming to Groningen. He also taught secondary school physics at the Gymnasium Apeldoorn.