About Us

The Ghent University dwarf galaxy group Dwarf galaxy research kicked off within the astronomy group of Ghent University in 2001 with an ESO Large Program on the internal dynamics of dwarf elliptical galaxies in the Fornax Cluster and in nearby galaxy groups. This program spawned a number of observational projects and collaborations and also led to the need to perform numerical simulations in order to try and understand the observations. This theoretical work now forms the core of what we do.

Current members

Sven De RijckeI am associate professor in astronomy at Ghent University. I am mainly interested in the evolution of dwarf galaxies and in the origin of spiral structure in massive disc galaxies.

Bert Vandenbroucke

Robbert Verbeke

Former members

Dolf Michielsen You can find his papers here. Dolf bravely combined observations of the interstellar medium and stellar populations of dwarf galaxies with numerical simulations in order to make sense of the observations. After his PhD in Ghent, he moved on to a postdoc at Nottingham University within the MAGPOP Marie Curie Research Training Network funded under the Sixth Framework Programme of the EU, running from 1 December 2004 to 1 December 2008. He now works as a software engineer.

Sander ValckeYou can find his papers here. Sander used N-body/SPH simulations to study the observable properties of isolated dwarf galaxies. He showed that the simulated dwarfs end up on the same kinematic and photometric scaling relations as the observed ones. Another point of interest was the spatial and temporal variation of their star formation. He now works as a senior R&D engineer.

Joeri SchroyenYou can find his papers here. His main topic was the influence of angular momentum as a second parameter, after mass, on the evolution of dwarf galaxies. He found that rotation puts up an angular momentum barrier that prevents the influx of gas towards the galaxy center and thus leads to more continuous and widespread star formation, as is observed in late-type dwarf galaxies. He now works as a functional analyst.

Annelies Cloet-OsselaerYou can find her papers here. Annelies implemented and applied a novel way of introducing a dwarf galaxy's merger history into the simulations. First, a merger tree is constructed based on the extended Press-Schechter method and this merger tree is subsequently simulated in full detail using an N-body/SPH code. This method is still used within our group. She is now working as a high-school teacher, training the next generation of scientists.

Mina KolevaYou can find her papers here. As a postdoc in our group, Mina used the ULySS code to fit stellar population models to observed spectra of dwarf galaxies with the goal of unraveling their past star-formation histories. She also studied the kinematics and stellar population properties of Blue Compact Dwarfs. She is now working as a project officer with the Research Executive Agency of the European Commision.