Institute of Physics

Physics research and education at our institute covers a wide range of topics - both experimental and theoretical, and ranging from fundamental to more applied.

Metamaterials designed by AI for sustainable steel applications

Mechanical metamaterials could reduce the enormous footprint of steel production in various applications. However, designing these metamaterials is time-consuming. In an MMD TechHub project, researchers develop deep ...
Corentin Coulais appointed professor in Soft Matter Mechanics

As of 1 September 2026, Dr Corentin Coulais has been appointed professor in Soft Matter Mechanics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.
Jonas Veenstra wins Christiaan Huygens science award

Jonas Veenstra is this year’s recipient of the Christiaan Huygens science award for his doctoral thesis, ‘Animating metamaterials with non-reciprocity’. During a celebratory gathering at the Oude Kerk in Voorburg, ...
Bart Weber receives Vidi grant to explore charge-controlled friction

Bart Weber, associate professor at the UvA Institute of Physics and leader of the Contact Dynamics group at ARCNL, has been awarded an NWO Vidi grant for his project “Repel or attract? Switchable stickiness for ...
UvA quantum technology venture EpoQ wins PhotonDelta Global Photonics Contest

EpoQ, a quantum technology venture emerging from the University of Amsterdam's Institute of Physics, has won the 2026 Global Photonics Engineering Contest organised by PhotonDelta. The venture is developing a new ...
Time crystals: moving to an internal beat

A team of physicists from several universities in the Netherlands and the UK have developed one- and two-dimensional materials that at the same time are time crystals – with repeating patterns not just in space but ...
New project to investigate the source of the record-breaking neutrino detected by KM3NeT

Astroparticle physicists Aart Heijboer (UvA-IoP and Nikhef) and Shin’ichiro Ando (UvA-IoP and GRAPPA) have received funding from NWO to conduct further research into the neutrino that struck Earth with ...
IoP and QuSoft Welcome Barbara Terhal as 2026 Turing Chair

IoP and QuSoft are delighted to announce that Professor Barbara Terhal has been appointed as the 2026 Turing Chair. A leading researcher in quantum error correction and quantum information, Professor Terhal will be ...
Prizes for Charly Bolhuis and Bernardo Dias at Metamaterials 2026

Two PhD students of the Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute at UvA-IoP, Charly Bolhuis and Bernardo Dias, have won prizes for their papers at the conference Metamaterials 2026 in New York.
Machine learning successfully predicts new materials for storing heat

Scientists from the University of Amsterdam (UvA) have used AI to significantly speed up the search for better heat storage materials—an important step toward more sustainable energy systems. In a paper in the Nature ...