ABOUT CASIMIR

LION welcomes new member of staff

[04-09-2012]

LION is very happy to welcome Dr. Dorothea Samtleben as a new member of its scientific staff (associate professor/tenure track). Dorothea has her roots in Hamburg where she began her scientific career working as an experimental physicist on collider experiments at the electron proton collider HERA at DESY. A fellowship at the University of Chicago led her into the field of observational cosmology studying the oldest photons in the universe, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radialtion (CMB) She joined CAPMAP, one of the first experiments measuring the faint polarization signal of the CMB which provides insights into the development of the early universe. She continued the path in cosmology then at the Max-Planck-Institut fuer radioastronomie in Bonn with the international expertiment QUIET that is aiming to address the even fainter polarization pattern in the CMB expected as signature from the inflation of the universe in its first tiny fraction of a second. In addition to data analysis she was responsible for the development of the data acquisition system and receiver components within these CMB experiments.

In 2010 Dorothea joined Nikhef in Amsterdam where she embarked on the Antares/Km3NeT neutrino telescope projects that are aiming at opening a new window to the Universe by exploiting neutrinos as messengers from the distant Universe with light detectors installed in the Mediterranean Sea. Alongside her new position at the University of Leiden, Dorothea will also continue researching at Nikhef, thereby establishing a new link between the theoretical and experimental sides of cosmology.