Alumni

PhD Students

Dr. Renske Smit (2010-2015) was a PhD student in the Bouwens research group, doing some of the first discovery studies of extreme emission lines in z>=6 galaxies and the Star Formation Rate Function.   She defended her thesis in April 2015, did a short postdoc in Durham with Mark Swinbank, and then won a prestigious NWO Rubicon Fellowship to move to Cambridge University to work with Roberto Maiolino as part of the JWST NIRSPEC GTO team.   Renske used ALMA to quantify the rotational motion in two z~7 galaxies in a January 2018 Nature paper.   Renske also won a prestigious MERAC prize (April 2018) for the outstanding research she did in observational astrophysics while pursuing her PhD thesis (2010-2015).

Postdocs

Dr. Benne Holwerda (2013-2016) has now moved onto an associate professor position at the University of Kentucky in December 2016.  While in Leiden, Benne measured the sizes of ultra-bright galaxies at z~9-10 for the first time.  Benne also led the Leiden effort (in collaboration with BoRG team) to obtain follow-up data on bright z~8 galaxies identified over the HST pure-parallel fields.   Benne led a successful cycle-24 program to obtain HST + Spitzer/IRAC observations on the bright candidates from this program.  With this program, we will secure a large sample of extremely bright z~8 galaxies for follow-up studies with JWST and the VLT.   Very talented postdoc Joanna Bridge joined Benne in Louisville and recently analyzed the HST+Spitzer observations of the bright candidates from this program in a paper submitted to the Astrophysical Journal.   Significantly more sensitive Spitzer/IRAC observations are expected over this sample of bright z~8 galaxies as a result of a successful cycle-14 Spitzer program Benne led.

Master students

	Guido Roberts-Borsani (2014-2015) pioneered a new technique to select the brightest galaxies at z>7 showing prominent [OIII] line emission and applied it to CANDELS program.   All 4 bright z>7 sources Guido identified in his published paper showed a prominent Lyα emission line and were spectroscopically confirmed.  Two of the sources broke the high-redshift spectroscopic distance record and were featured in high-profile international press releases.   Guido is now a PhD student at UCL.
	Nicholas Rasappu (2014-2015) investigated the impact of the Halpha on the Spitzer/IRAC colors of z~5 galaxies using a small sample of z~5.1-5.4 and z~4.6-5.0 galaxies.    Nicholas Rasappu found the impact of nebular emission lines on the measured fluxes of z~5 galaxies was much more prominent than for galaxies at lower redshift.  Nicholas’ results were sufficiently interesting to merit publication.   Nicholas now is working in finance and modeling international markets.
	Hiddo Algera (2016-) will be taking advantage of the deepest-ever observations with Spitzer/IRAC to investigate the prevalence and EW of the [OIII]+Hβ emission lines in z~7 galaxies.
	Nikki Zabel worked with a postdoc in my group  Benne Holwerda  and Xander Tielens on a research project involving M51.

Undergraduate students

Lieke van Son, Robbie Brooymans, Isabel van Vledder, Dieuwertje van der Vlugt, Job van der Wardt, Marco Trueba van den Boom, Dennis Vandal, Lennard van Sluijs, Eva  van Weenen, Charlotte Brand, and Leandra Swiers are the names of Bachelor students who did research projects as part of my extended team, most of whom received daily supervision by Dr. Benne Holwerda.    The subject matter covered by these students was quite extensive and involved in mapping dwarf studies in our own Galaxy the Milky Way.  The results from this research project was published here and resulted in an International press release (e.g., see this article).

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