Auke Pieter Colijn appointed as special professor Experimental Astroparticle Physics at Utrecht University
As of 1 November 2016, Auke Pieter Colijn joins the Institute for Subatomic Physics at Utrecht University as a Professor by Special Appointment, on the Nikhef chair in Experimental Astroparticle Physics. His research focuses on dark matter: invisible matter that has been theoretically shown to exist, but has yet to be discovered. Nikhef has established the Experimental Astroparticle Physics chair for a period of five years. In addition to his position at Utrecht University, Colijn will retain his main position as an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam.
Colijn did his PhD at Nikhef, working on the L3 experiment of the Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN. Colijn subsequently worked at the Tevatron particle accelerator in Chicago. In 2003, he returned to Nikhef, where he first joined CERN's ATLAS experiment, and he is now involved with the Xenon collaboration; his research focuses on the Xenon detector for dark matter in Gran Sasso, Italy.
In the FOM Yearbook of 2013, you can find an interview with Auke Pieter Colijn.