I am a theoretical physicist working in the area of quantum gravity, string theory and cosmology. Currently I am an associate professor in the Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics at the University of Amsterdam and also a member of the String Theory Group. I received my master's and Ph.D. at the University of Groningen, after which I held postdoctoral research positions at the University of Michigan, CERN's Theory Division and the Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (ISCAP) at Columbia University, before arriving at the University of Amsterdam in January 2006.