Welcome to my website!

My name is Wouter, and I am a FNRS CR postdoctoral researcher, working at the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

I study atomic nuclei, the tiny systems composed of protons and neutrons at the heart of molecules. There are so many different nuclei that can be studied in a lab, that people talk about the map (or more commonly, chart) of nuclei. This chart truly represents a zoo of different behaviors: adding or subtracting just one single proton or neutron can drastically alter many properties of the nucleus, from shape to size to whether or not it is radioactive.

Effective modeling of nuclei is very hard: except for the very few lightest nuclei, there are too many neutrons and protons to allow us to solve the equations analytically. On the other hand, they consist of too few particles to allow for a statistical description. So, what we do is we build simplified models of nuclei that keep the equations tractable (for modern computers, if not for humans with pen and paper) and try to incorporate as much as possible of the physics of these fascinating systems.

At least part of the aim of this website is to make both me and my research more approachable. At the moment you can find my CV on here, as well as the slides to some recent (and some not so recent) talks I gave.

Feel free to look around, and do not hesitate to contact me.