The research of Daniël Boer focuses on the physics of elementary particles, in particular on quarks and gluons (QCD) and on possible new particles beyond the current Standard Model of elementary particle physics. In 2019 Boer was elected fellow of the American Physical Society "for contributions toward the understanding of the spin and momentum structure of quarks and gluons in nucleons, in particular those relevant in single spin asymmetries, and for studies of the color glass condensate phase in quantum chromodynamics.” Those contributions have helped shape the physics case of the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) that is under construction in the U.S.A. and will be operational in the 2030s. Especially the synergies of the EIC and LHC are his current research interests. The focus here is on novel effects at high energies from the collective behavior of gluons and the theoretical description thereof.

The knowledge of gluons is essential for a proper description of high-energy scattering. This also applies to searches for new particles. So far there are no experimental indications for such new physics, therefore, theoretical investigations will have to follow general guiding principles. It turns out to be very hard to find highly symmetric theories that naturally, i.e. without fine-tuning, lead to the Standard Model at low energies and satisfy the extremely stringent experimental constraints on any new physics. This is a longstanding problem that will probably require completely new approaches, which is another research interest.   

Daniël Boer received his education in theoretical physics at Utrecht University (1989-1994), did his PhD research at Nikhef, Amsterdam (1994-1998) and received his PhD degree at the VU University Amsterdam in September 1998. He became a postdoctoral research associate at the RIKEN-BNL Research Center (RBRC), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Long Island, New York, U.S.A. (1998-2001). He returned to the Netherlands on a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the VU University Amsterdam, where he became lecturer and obtained tenure in 2005. In 2009 he moved to the University of Groningen (first to KVI and later to VSI) to become a full professor in 2017. In 2019 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He is best known for the Boer-Mulders function (published in 1998 in Physical Review D with his PhD thesis advisor Piet Mulders). He is currently scientific director of the Van Swinderen Institute for Particle Physics and Gravity (VSI) of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. He is and has been member of various committees and boards, both nationally and internationally, such as the SPSC & PBC of CERN, and he was elected European Representative of the Electron-Ion Collider User Group (2017-2021).