Joris van Heijningen

Since the start of my Ph.D., I have been part of the team of scientists that built the detectors which observed gravitational waves (GWs) in 2015. This opened up a window on the Universe and we're now routinely hearing the collisions of black holes and neutron stars. Now, I am developing the world's most sensitive vibration sensors for future cryogenic GW detectors. I was born in 's-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. After finishing the M.Sc. Applied Physics (TUDelft) and a project at Stanford/SLAC in the US, I moved to GWs and am currently a permanent research scientist at UCLouvain, Belgium.