Learn about the fascinating properties of Black Holes on the web
site
that my team created.
The site won the Top Prize of the
2005 Pirelli Awards for the
best internet site worldwide devoted to the comunication of science
and technology.
The software for the site is also freely available from STScI for use in
museum kiosk exhibits. This version won a MUSE
award from the American Association of Museums. Scroll to the
bottom of this
page for excerpts of some reviews of the web site.
Er is nu ook een Nederlandstalige
versie van de website!
![[*]](gifdir/animstar.gif){kind=small}
My life in a nutshell
My family roots can be traced back to the village of Wateringen in The Netherlands some 500 years ago.
For details, see my page (in Dutch, with Google translation into English
available):
I myself was born in the nearby city of The Hague. At the age of four I moved to Wassenaar, where I lived for sixteen years. I attended the Salvator primary school and the St. Adelbert high school. I moved to Leiden, to study astronomy and mathematics at Leiden University. I obtained a PhD in astronomy, and then worked for three years as a Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. I then moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, where I first was a STScI Fellow and where I now work as a tenured Astronomer. I am also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the nearby Johns Hopkins University. My wife Alessandra Aloisi is also an astronomer at STScI. We have a daughter called Julia and a son called Patrick. In my spare time I like to run.
(1) I do scientific research in astronomy. In my research I combine observational, theoretical and numerical approaches to study a variety of subjects. I focus in particular on the structure, dynamics, evolution and formation of galaxies, and on the study of the massive black holes in their nuclei. I do optical and near-infrared imaging and spectroscopic observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and ground-based telescopes. Analysis of the data often requires development of new data reduction techniques and instrument-specific software. To interpret the results I construct stellar and gas dynamical models that are based on the laws of physics. I publish the results of my research in various journals. I am a member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Astronomical Society and the Dutch Astronomers Club.
(2) I do work in areas that support the Hubble Space Telescope mission
and the James Webb Space
Telescope mission. I presently lead the Telescopes Group in the
STScI Instruments Division, which is responsible for issues related to
the telescope structure and focus for both of these missions. This
includes preparations for Wavefront Sensing and Control on the Webb
Telescope, which will be launched in 2013. I previously led the Branch
at STScI responsible for the calibration and user support of the Advanced Camera for Surveys
(ACS) and Wide
Field Planatery Camera 2 (WFPC2). ACS is the instrument with which
the Hubble Space Telescope
performed most of its observations from 2002-2006, whereas WFPC2 is
the instrument with which Hubble
Space Telescope performed most of its observations from 1994-2001
and 2007-2008.
General Information for non-astronomers:
General Information for non-astronomers (Dutch):
Database search:
