Heijboer is an expert in the field of neutrino astronomy and has a broad spectrum of research interests within that field. He created the reconstruction methods for the ANTARES neutrino detector, had a leading role in the discovery of so-called B_s oscillations with the Collider Detector at Fermilab, and now coordinates all data-analyses as the Physics and Software Manager for the KM3NeT neutrino telescope. With his research group in Amsterdam, he uses this detector to search for new neutrino sources in the universe.

Aart Heijboer obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2004, where he did research for the ANTARES project at NIKHEF. He then became a postdoctoral researcher at Fermilab in Chicago, after which he was appointed as a CERN Research Fellow at the Atlas experiment in Geneva. Since 2009, Heijboer has worked on the neutrino telescope programme at NIKHEF. He has received NWO Vidi and Vici grants, and was the lead applicant for the successful NWO Large Scale Research Infrastructure Roadmap proposal “KM3NeT 2.0”.

As professor by special appointment at UvA, Heijboer will continue his research in neutrino astroparticle physics, in particular in the context of the KM3NeT collaboration. With this neutrino telescope, which has a higher resolution than earlier experiments and is better able to view the centre of our galaxy, it becomes possible to track down the sources of cosmic neutrinos that are observed in large numbers on Earth. Besides his research, Heijboer will also continue to be an active teacher, supervising bachelor, master and PhD students and teaching the course in Statistical Data Analysis that he developed and that is part of the GRAPPA track of the combined UvA-VU master in Physics and Astronomy.