General Information

On 6 March 2015, the Van Swinderen Institute for Particle Physics and Gravity (VSI) held its inaugural symposium. Exactly 10 years later, on Thursday 6 March 2025, we will celebrate this milestone with a symposium at the Forum in Groningen, the Netherlands. The aim of the symposium is to enjoy scientific talks by three keynote speakers about the recent developments and current status of the international research field ánd some shorter talks that put the research of the institute in this perspective. Besides current and former institute members, we welcome colleagues from other institutes at the University of Groningen, from the national Nikhef collaboration and other guests interested in the subjects of the symposium.

About the Van Swinderen Institute for Particle Physics and Gravity
The VSI was formed from a merger of the former Center for Theoretical Physics (CTN) and two research groups of the former Kernfysisch Versneller Instituut (KVI). The institute is named after Theodorus van Swinderen (1784-1851), a professor of Natural History at the University of Groningen and the founder of the Royal Physics Society (Koninklijk Natuurkundig Genootschap, 1801-present). Currently, the VSI has 15 scientific staff members, three honorary/special appointment professors, 5-6 postdocs and 40-45 PhD students.

The focus of the VSI is on fundamental research in particle physics and gravity. The VSI’s mission is to advance the understanding of Nature at its most fundamental level, through the theoretical and experimental investigation of Nature’s fundamental forces and building blocks of matter, and their symmetries, over a wide range of distance scales. In this way, we aim to connect the physics at the smallest distances scales (from molecules, atoms, and elementary particles down to the Planck scale of quantum gravity) to astrophysical observations at cosmic distance scales. This curiosity-driven research is performed in close collaboration between theory and experiment and is organized along three themes: the cosmic frontier, the high-energy frontier and the precision frontier.  

Since 2016, VSI has been a university partner of the Nikhef collaboration, which is a partnership between NWO’s Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef) and six Dutch universities. Through Nikhef, VSI participates in the LHCb experiment at CERN, and the main local experiment of the NL-eEDM collaboration, situated on the Zernike campus, is an integral part of the Nikhef research portfolio. Besides the local and CERN-based experiments, VSI staff members also take part in the analysis of data from astrophysical observatories (both earth based detectors and satellites).