Professor of Theoretical High Energy Astrophysics
Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy/GRAPPA
University of Amsterdam
Science Park 904, rm. C4.151
1098 XH Amsterdam, Netherlands
T +31 20 525 7478/7491
s.b.markoff@uva.nl

I work at the interface of Astrophysics and Astroparticle Physics, and am interested in a variety of problems relating to the accretion process especially around black holes, both big and small.   I am a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, and served a member of its Science Council from 2016-2022 (Vice Chair from 2019), and a member of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Project.  I am currently coPI of the ERC Synergy Grant “BlackHolistic” to better understand black holes of all scales, including building a new mm-radio dish in Namibia (the Africa Millimeter Telescope, or AMT) in partnership with the University of Namibia.  By augmenting the EHT array with the AMT we will be able to make the first movies of the event horizon region of a supermassive black hole, as well as use the AMT on its own to study transient black hole outbursts.


Group Blog

Exploring Black Hole Accretion Dynamics: My AAS 243rd Meeting Experience

Hey everyone! So, I did not physically attend the 243rd Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from January 7th to 11th, 2024. However, my presence was still felt at the conference, thanks to my advisor, Sera Markoff, who presented two interactive posters on my behalf. Let me start by introducing my first poster presented at the conference. Check it out through the link: “High-resolution insights into black hole accretion dynamics and jet phenomena”. In this work, we perform a convergence study with the GPU-accelerated GRMHD (General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic) code H-AMR on a wider range of resolutions than has ever been previously explored. What made our presentation truly special was its interactive nature. Click... Continue reading →

Latest News

Bringing the band back together!

First, the new news

It’s the start of a new year so of course I made a bunch of resolutions that likely won’t stick, but one of them was to start doing more research blogging on our site, and to encourage my group to do better here too, after a longish hiatus. Why the hiatus? At least from my side I guess the fallout from the pandemic has been … Continue reading →

Where I Am / Will Be

CTAO symposium + CTAC
April 15, 2024 - April 19, 2024
Location: Bologna Italy
EHT collab mtg
May 20, 2024 - May 24, 2024
Vacation
June 21, 2024 - July 3, 2024
Lorentz Ctr mtg Soc Justice
July 8, 2024 - July 12, 2024