JORIS’ BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Verbiest’s educational background is largely technological, although his scientific career (from the PhD onwards) has had little to do with technology and is mostly data analysis and is getting closer to data science every year. The scientific highlights have been PTA work (i.e. Pulsar Timing Array work, which is the effort to detect gravitational waves by meticulously analysing the arrival times of pulses from pulsars). During his PhD on that topic, he was the first to demonstrate (based on real data rather than theoretical predictions) that the PTA concept was indeed viable; during his Marie-Curie stint he led the first global combination of PTA data. As a professor, he shifted his focus somewhat to low-frequency radio astronomy (think <250MHz), specifically in order to study the ionised interstellar medium. Since joining FSI, he has taken on the management of the International Pulsar Timing Array and is coordinating the organization of its future data releases and pending gravitational-wave investigations!