My main research interests lies in Galaxy formation in the first billion years, a time of great upheaval in the history of the Universe. As the first sources of light in a dark Universe, these galaxies ended the ‘cosmic dark ages’ and produced the first photons that could break apart the fragile hydrogen atoms suffusing all of space starting the process of ‘cosmic reionization’. The primary building blocks of all structure, these galaxies determine the physical properties of all subsequent galaxy populations. Indeed, the ‘Rosetta Stone’ of modern astrophysics, the earliest galaxies are critical to understand the beautifully complex Universe we see today.

My main goals are to learn:

• - how the inextricably interlinked processes of galaxy formation and reionization drive each other
• - if reionization observations, possible with the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA), can be linked to the physical properties of the underlying galaxy population
• - more about the nature of the elusive Dark Matter that makes up 80% of the matter content in the Universe

To this end my research group is developing a coherent theoretical framework for modelling galaxy formation in the first billion years of the Universe combining state-of-the-art simulations of structure formation, a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation and numerical radiative-transfer codes. This work is supported by my ERC starting grant (DELPHI) and a NWO VIDI grant (ODIN).