About
Hi, I’m Reinhold (rhymes with “blind fold”).
I am a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven in Belgium, specializing in the study of interacting, massive binary stars.
Binary stars are pairs of stars that are gravitationally bound and orbit around each other. Massive stars end their lives with the collapse of the iron core, potentially resulting in neutron stars, black holes, and supernova explosions. Interactions occur in binaries when one star pulls the outer layers off the other, leading to an enormous variety of stellar objects, transients, and chemical and kinetic feedback mechanisms which modify the environment of the binaries.
The Binary Star Zoo below shows some of the outcomes of binary star evolution.
I am also especially fond of pulsars, the observational (and theoretical) diversity of supernovae, the missing red supergiant problem, the formation of black holes and neutron stars, and the challenges of mass transfer stability, accretion, and eccentricity evolution. For further details, and for a list of recent publications, see Research.
I completed my PhD in 2023 at Monash University, in Melbourne, AU, in binary stellar astrophysics. My thesis, “Refining Mass Transfer and Supernova Models in Binary Stellar Populations”, focused on interacting, massive binary stars modelled using the rapid population synthesis code COMPAS, for which I am still an active developer.
If you would like to discuss opportunities to present talks or colloquia, or have a general research question, please reach out!
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Binary Star Zoo
