Rate My Professor Stefan Vandoren

Vandoren's research is centered around superstring theory, supergravity, and black holes, encompassing topics such as instantons in string theory, quaternion-Kähler metrics, holography, and applications to condensed matter systems like Weyl semimetals. He has co-authored the book "Time in Powers of Ten: Natural Phenomena and Their Timescales" with Gerard ’t Hooft (World Scientific, 2014; Dutch edition Veen Magazines, 2011). Notable awards include the Descartes-Huygens Prize (2008), NWO VICI laureate (2009-2016) for "Geometrical Aspects of Superstring Theory," Fellow of the Faculty of Science, University of Hasselt (2012), and Principal Investigator of the NWA Dutch Black Hole Consortium project (2021-2027, €5 million). Key publications comprise "Static nonextremal AdS4 black hole solutions" (JHEP 1209:048, 2012, with C. Toldo), "A 5d/2d/4d correspondence" (JHEP 1303:157, 2013, with B. Haghighat and J. Manschot), "Holographic models for undoped Weyl semimetals" (JHEP 1304:127, 2013, with U. Gürsoy et al.), "Four-dimensional black hole entropy from F-theory" (JHEP 08:043, 2019, with C. Couzens et al.), and "Towards a string realization of the Dark Dimension via T-folds" (JHEP 08, 2025, with G.E. Nian). He has taught courses including Quantum Field Theory, Special Relativity, and String Theory, supervised PhD students, and delivered lectures on black holes and supergravity at international schools.