About Me
Recently I started a new function at Valcon as a senior specialist and data scientist. I am determined to apply my broad skills to contemporty problems in industry and society. Previously I was a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam and the Leibniz Institute Dresden. After obtaining exceptional study results while balancing theoretical physics with foreign exchanges, extra curricular interdisciplinary courses, summer schools and teaching, I researched a variety of subjects. Understanding general relativity from a condensed matter perspective by studying analogue black holes, foundations of quantum mechanics and charge density waves in TaS2.
Recent highlights
On the 31st of January 2024 I will defend my PhD thesis with the name: Breaking boundaries, Charge density waves, quantum measurement, and black holes in theoretical physics. The thesis can be found at UvA Dare. A link to the defence can be found at the UvA calendar.
I collaborated with Catarina Cunha and Megumi Arai to publish a children's book about black holes, currently available at Amazon. Embark on an enlightening journey with "Alicia's Discoveries: Black Hole", a masterfully crafted tale that seamlessly weaves the marvels of astrophysics with the wonders of our own world. This book is a treasure trove of knowledge, imagination, and inspiration.
We published a popular science article on the weirdness of quantum physics at Scientific American.
Our last article Thermalization by a synthetic horizon November 2022. got picked up by international media (Altmetric) . Leading to multiple interviews with MDR Wissen , the voice of America, IOP news , IFW News and Kidsweek.
Recently a popular-science article was published in Amsterdam Science about my research on the quantum measurement problem. You can download the article here. Or read the full issue at Amsterdam Science.
Lotte Mertens (UvA-IoP) will receive the Lorentz Graduation Award for Theoretical Physics, awarded annually by the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. In her prize-winning master’s thesis, Mertens studied the relation between quantum mechanics at the microscopic level and the measurements we make of it at much larger scales. Source: UvA