The 2^nd Information Universe Conference

Chris Van Den Broeck, Faculty at the Van Swinderen Institute, the Netherlands

2017-present: professor by special appointment, Van Swinderen Institute, University of Groningen
2016-present: co-chair, LIGO-Virgo Working Group on Testing General Relativity
2014-2016: Data Analysis Coordinator, Virgo Collaboration
2013-present: Research Working Group Leader, Nikhef
2009-2013: Senior Scientist, Nikhef
2005-2009: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Cardiff University, Uk
2000-2005: PhD, theoretical physics

Manus Visser, PhD at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Manus Visser is a PhD student at University of Amsterdam, working closely with Erik Verlinde on emergent gravity.

Margot Brouwer, Postdoc at the Universities of Groningen and Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Margot Brouwer is an astrophysicist from Amsterdam. After graduating from the University of Amsterdam she obtained her doctorate at the Leiden Observatory. She uses weak gravitational lensing with the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) to study dark matter, alternative gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe. She is currently working as an astronomical researcher at the Universities of Amsterdam and Groningen. In her spare time she likes to think about the philosophical aspects of cosmology.

Dawood Kothawala, Faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India

The author is Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. His work has mostly been on thermodynamics of horizons, quantum field theory in curved spacetime, and the small scale structure of quantum spacetime.

Stefano Gottardi, Physicist at Simbeyond B.V. Eindhoven, the Netherlands

Stephen Anastasi, Faculty at the The Scots PGC College, Australia

Stephen Anastasi teaches senior chemistry, physics and mathematics in Queensland, Australia. He has one core interest – why the universe comes to be as it is. In 1996, studying toward a B.Sc. (Physics) he identified that if the universe accords with reason, then the objects that populate contemporary physical ontologies are inherently disjunct – the universe ought to collapse to unconnected simples. This is well known but outside the scope of physics. Not knowing this problem is regarded as intractable, he built a model of a universe from a necessary principle of equivalence. Connection between the highly abstract model and empirically derived models was not initially identifiable, so he withdrew from a Masters by research. In 2013, he happened upon the concept of the information universe, Bekenstein-Hawking information bound, and holographic universe. This drew unexpected connections into sharp focus and is the basis of this presentation.

Shreya Banerjee, PhD at the Tata Institute Of Fundamental Research Mumbai, India

I am interested in all aspects of the physics of Gravity (General Relativity, Quantum Gravity), Cosmology (Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Quantum Cosmology, Inflation, Bounce), Modified Theories of Gravity, study of exotic compact objects like black holes, neutron stars and the interrelations between these subjects (for e.g. explaining dark matter and dark energy by modified theories of gravity or searching for cosmological signatures of Quantum Gravity theories etc.). My past works have dealt with the 1) application of modified quantum theory to early universe phenomena (like inflation, quantum cosmology etc.) and 2) the study of modified gravity theories in the context of dark matter, dark energy, binary pulsars and bounce. In the future, I shall continue my work in these areas with the hope to understand and explain longlasting, unexplained and subtle issues in the history of the universe in a satisfactory manner. I am also interested in exploring new avenues for progress.

Franco Vazza, Dipartimento di Astronomia, Università di Bologna

Franco Vazza is a numerical astrophysicist who studies the origin of extragalactic magnetic fields and the evolution of cosmic structures (from galaxy clusters to cosmic filaments) using very big numerical simulations. He is currently employed as a Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna, and he has been granted of an ERC Starting Grant for the project MAGCOW (The Magnetised Cosmic Web) which will study until 2022 the origin and observational signatures of extragalactic magnetic fields, combining advanced numerical simulations and radio observations.

Chris Roelfsema - Remote Sensing Research Centre, School of Earth, St. Lucia, Australia

Chris Roelfsema is senior research fellow at the University of Queensland. He leads a team developing approaches for mapping and monitoring coral reefs and seagrass environments (https://www.rsrc.org.au/coastal-mapping-and-monitoring), applied to large reef systems in the Asia Pacific and the Caribbean, such as the most recent mapping of 250 Great Barrier Reefs. These approaches, integrated cost efficient field methods, satellite or airborne imagery, objet based analysis and eco-geomorphological knowledge. Field methods included georeferenced photo quadrates surveys, underwater spectrometry, and above and underwater drone surveys. Chris has trained, advised and collaborated with coral reef ecologist and biologist, managers of national and international research groups, government and/or non-government agencies. He combines citizen science with his research, volunteer projects, instructs divers and advises Reef Check Australia and CoralWatch. Chris contributed to over 100 papers, books and data sets, and the remote sensing toolkit (https://www.rsrc.org.au/rstoolkit). He supervises PhD students, lectures marine and advanced remote sensing, and is co-director of the Remote Sensing Research Centre (www.rsrc.org.au).

Patrick Deelen, Postdoc at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands

Patrick Deelen completed his BASc of bioinformatics at the Hanze University Groningen in 2010 and his MSc of bioinformatics at the VU University Amsterdam in 2012 with honors. He mostly works on DNA and RNA data of populations cohorts in genetics department of the University Medical Center Groningen and he is currently wrapping up his PhD thesis. He worked among others on the Genome of The Netherlands, Lifelines, and the BIOS cohort.

Joeri van der Velde, Postdoc at the University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands

Kasper Joeri van der Velde was born on May 24th 1986 in Drachten, The Netherlands. He completed his bachelors Bioinformatics in 2008, graduating on pathway visualizations of kinase activity at the Groningen Bioinformatics Centre in collaboration with the UMC Groningen dept. of Cell Biology. He continued to work on MOLGENIS software infrastructure for various multi-omics research projects in Arabidopsis, mice and C. elegans at the Groningen Bioinformatics Centre. In 2012 he started as a PhD student at the UMC Groningen dept. of Genetics, working on new methods and systems for accurate high-throughput clinical analysis of next-generation sequencing data in the group of Morris Swertz, finishing early 2018. Now, amongst a unique crowd of clinicians, software developers, geneticists, parallel computing experts, wet-lab technicians and statisticians, he aims to discover new ways to revolutionize the speed, yield and applications of genome interpretation for medical genetics to advance patient care, powered by a wealth of untapped resources available in the public domain.

Ashish Marabal, Faculty at California Institute of technology, USA

Ashish Mahabal is a Computational Data Scientist, working at the Center for Data Driven Discovery of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1998 he obtained his PhD in astronomy at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at Pune, India. After a one-year postdoc position at the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, he moved to Caltech. His main areas of expertise are machine learning and data-mining, mainly for the classification of transient astronomical sources. He has participated in several large-area sky surveys, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope survey (LSST), the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey (CRTS), and the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). Currently he leads the machine learning effort for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). His interest lies in combining diverse datasets to maximize scientific output using statistical and mathematical techniques, machine learning and (where possible) citizen science. He is applying these techniques to a variety of different fields, ranging from earth science with the EarthCube community, to medicine with the consortium for Molecular and Cellular Characterization of Lesions (MCL) and the Early Detection Research Network for cancer (EDRN). More generally he is interested in informatics, virtual worlds and educational outreach.

Andrew Arrasmith, Phd-student at UC Davis Physics/Los Alamos National Labs, US

I hold BS's in Physics and Mathematics from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. I have a MS in Physics from the University of California Davis, where I am working on my Ph.D. under Andreas Albrecht. As part of my Ph.D., I am currently working under Wojciech Zurek at Los Alamos National Labs.

Giuseppe Longo, Faculty at University Federico II in Napoli, Italy

Professor of Astrophysics. He is among the early pioneers of the emerging field of Astroinformatics. Leads the astroinformatics group at the University of Napoli.

Reynier Peletier, Kapteyn Institute, RUG, NL

Nina Hernitschek, Postdoc at Caltech University, US

Since 2/2017: Postdoc at Caltech
09/2013 to 1/2017: PhD student at MPIA/ IMPRS, "Astrophysical Modeling of Time-Domain Surveys", supervisor Hans-Walter Rix
08/2013: M.Sc. Physics, University of Heidelberg, "Estimating Black Hole Masses in Hundreds of Quasars", supervisor Hans-Walter Rix
02/2012: B.Sc. Physics, University of Heidelberg, "Geodesic Lines in Schwarzschild and Kerr Metric", supervisor Matthias Bartelmann
since 2003: worked in several IT projects in industry and research

Richard Lopp, Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Wat (CA), US

Currently a PhD student at IQC and the University of Waterloo specialising in Relativistic Quantum Information (RQI) and light-matter interaction, supervised by Eduardo Martin-Martinez. Previously completed the Master's degree at Perimeter Institute in 2017.

Sinziana Paduroiu, Research Scientist at Quantum Gravity Research, US

Sinziana Paduroiu is a research scientist at Quantum Gravity Research Institute in Los Angeles. She earned her Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of Geneva where she worked on numerical simulations of structure formation in various dark matter models. She has a M.Sc. in atomic/nuclear interactions and elementary particles and as an undergraduate she studied physics and philosophy.

Maarten Breddels, Freelance developer / consultant, the Netherlands

Maarten is a freelance developer / consultant / data scientist working working mostly with Python, C++ and Javascript in the Jupyter ecosystem. His expertise ranges from fast numerical computation, API design, to 3d visualization. He has a Bachelor in ICT, a Master and PhD in Astronomy and likes to code and solve problems.

Bas Beukers, CCO at Horus VR Experience, the Netherlands

Jean-Paul van Oosten, Senior Data Scientist at Target Holding, the Netherlands

Remo Tilanus, Faculty at the Leiden Observatory & Radboud University, the Netherlands

Remo Tilanus is Project Manager of the Event Horizon Telescope Consortium and BlackHoleCam.

René Laureijs, ESA/ESTEC, NL

The authors are closely involved in the development of the Euclid Space Mission. René Laureijs is presently the Euclid Project Scientist and contributed to the scientific support of a number of space missions, in particular IRAS, ISO, and Planck. Giuseppe Racca is the Project Manager for Euclid, and Xavier Dupac works on the science operations.

Johan Hidding, Netherlands eScience Center / Kapteyn Institute

Johan Hidding did his masters at the Kapteyn Institute (RuG) working on the geometry and dynamics of the Cosmic Web using the adhesion model, under supervision of Rien van de Weijgaert. This masters project was continued into a PhD program which is nearing completion. Meanwhile, Johan is working at the Netherlands eScience center, working to improve the quality of scientific software across the domains.

Mark Neyrinck, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, SP

Mark Neyrinck is originally from Colorado, where he also earned his PhD at the University of Colorado at Boulder. After postdoctoral positions at the University of Hawaii, Johns Hopkins, and Durham University, he is now an Ikerbasque Fellow in Bilbao, Spain.

Daan Meerburg, Cambridge /RUG, UK/NL

PhD Amsterdam, Theoretical Physics and Astronomy
2011 Rubicon Fellow, Princeton
2011-2013 Postdoc, Princeton
2013-2014 CITA fellow, University of Toronto
2014-2017 Senior Kavli Fellow, Cambridge
2017-now VIDI/Assistent Prof. RUG
2017-now Collaborations: Planck, Simons Observatory, CMBS4, CCATp, Cosmic Visions 21cm