Jan van Roestel

Postdoc at ISTA & BlackGEM Project Scientist

Institute of Science and Technology Austria

Research Interests: Time-domain astronomy, LISA gravitational wave sources, white dwarf binaries and white dwarfs with planetary systems, data mining/machine learning/GPU programming

Jan van Roestel

About Me

I am an observational astronomer and focus on white dwarf binary stars, specifically systems that emit gravitational waves that will be detectable by the LISA gravitational wave satellite. I am an expert in time-domain astronomy and the use of optical time-domain survey telescopes, including the Zwicky Transient Facility and Rubin/LSST. I am also the project scientist for the BlackGEM telescope project which is aimed at finding the optical signals of neutron-star mergers and studying the variable night sky.

Current: Since September 2025, I am a postdoc at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), where I use various large surveys to study variable white dwarfs such as binary white dwarfs that are gravitational wave sources, planets around white dwarf stars, and massive, rapidly rotating white dwarfs that are the merger products of two white dwarfs.

Previous: From 2022 to 2025, I was a VENI-postdoc fellow at the University of Amsterdam working on "The life and death of white dwarf binary stars". From 2018 to 2022, I was a postdoc at Caltech where I worked on the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) project as the Galactic science working group (co-)lead.

News

  • March 2026

    Hotwiring2026 Conference

    Invited talk on "Alerts for stellar astronomy" at Caltech

  • January 2026

    VLT-in-2030s Conference

    Discussion panel member on "Time domain astronomy" at ESO

  • September 2025

    New Position at ISTA

    Started as postdoc at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria

  • June 2025

    Dutch Astronomy Conference

    Talk on "Planetesimal transits around white dwarfs"

  • May 2025

    New Paper

    Published "Eclipsing white dwarfs from ZTF: II. Seven eclipsing double white dwarfs"