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Research profile Prof. dr. (R.F.) Reynier Peletier

Kapteyn Astronomical Institute

Description of research:

I am a Professor at the Kapteyn Institute at the University of Groningen. Until December 2016, I was the director of the Institute. I study the formation and evolution of galaxies, by studying their structure, kinematics and stellar populations. At the moment, my research is mostly focused on studying dwarf galaxies in the nearby Universe, but I am also very interested in studying larger galaxies. My work is observationally oriented, and I am constantly working with large astronomical datasets. I am also very much interested in astronomical instrumentation. I coordinate the master track Instrumentation and Informatics of the Master Astronomy, and I am part of the WEAVE project, to construct a large multifiber instrument for the William Herschel Telescope. At the moment my main efforts go into the SUNDIAL project, a 3.8 million euro EU Internation Training Network, which I am leading. It is an interdisciplinary network of of nine research groups in The Netherlands, Germany, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium and Italy.

The aim of the network is to develop novel algorithms to study the very large databases coming from current-day telescopes to better understand galaxy formation and evolution, and to prepare for the huge missions of the next decade. New in this network is the combination of two fields, computer science and astronomy, with their own history and traditions. Combining fields is the only way to continue to make progress in this era of Big Data. We expect that several of the methods that we develop will have useful applications in other fields in science and society. Our network also contains 5 private companies, who will collaborate with the university and observatory groups to bridge the gap between the academic world and society, with the aim to convert our results into commercial products.

I have a research group of about 10 people, including PhD students, master and bachelor students, working on several aspects of galaxy formation and data science, mostly related to the Fornax Deep Survey (FDS), to study the nearby Fornax galaxy cluster in detail to study effects of galaxy interactions on theor formation. I collaborate with researchers in many countries in the world.

Websites:
Employee (corporate homepage): http://www.rug.nl/staff/r.f.peletier/
Group website: http://www.rug.nl/research/kapteyn/

Last modified:14 February 2018 10.42 a.m.