Supervisor: Prof. dr. Rien van de Weygaert (Kapteyn)

Rien van de Weygaert is professor at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute. His research interests concern cosmology, the large scale Universe and the formation of structure in the Universe, as well  as computational geometry and topology and pattern recognition. Within this research interest he has had a particular interest in the formation and dynamics of the Cosmic Web, the complex network of interconnected filamentary galaxy associations that pervades our universe on scales of tens to hundreds of million lightyears, and the existence and evolution of voids, the large near empty regions in between these structures. For the analysis of this structure, van de Weygaert has been working on
a diverse array of tools emanating from computational geometry and topolgoy, which provide a highly versatile means of tracing the complex structures seen in the Universe.

Together with Gert Vegter, he has introduced homology measures for the topological analysis of the cosmic web. Following his additional interest in the history of astronomy and cosmology, with a particular interest in world's oldest astronomical and mechanical computer, the Antikythera mechanism.

Corporate webpage: http://www.rug.nl/staff/m.a.m.van.de.weygaert/