I am Associate Professor in the Amsterdam string theory group, and hold a Vidi grant from NWO. I recently won the 2008 Minerva prize from FOM for my work on the fuzzball proposal for black holes. I was also elected to The Young Academy of KNAW (the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences).
My main area of research is holography, the idea that gravity is dual to a lower dimensional non-gravitational theory. My work addresses foundational issues in gravity/gauge theory dualities: how is spacetime holographically reconstructed from gauge theory data? conversely, how is gauge theory data encoded in a given geometry?
Gravity/gauge theory dualities have enormous implications for black hole physics. The fuzzball proposal says that for every black hole microstate there is non-singular horizon-free geometry, with the black hole arising only after coarse-graining. This far-reaching proposal could resolve many long-standing issues in black hole physics, including the information loss paradox. My work uses gravity/gauge theory dualities to provide detailed and quantitative evidence that this proposal holds.
With LHC approaching, I am also turning my attention to beyond the standard model phenomenology, particularly where it interfaces with string theory.