About me
My name is Laurent Mahy. I am a Belgian researcher in Astrophysics. In 2005, I obtained my Master degree in Applied Mathematics with a specialisation in Celestial Mechanics at the University of Namur. I completed my PhD in Astronomy in the High-Energy Astrophysics Group at the Liège University in December 2011 under the supervision of Dr. Eric Gosset and Dr. Yaël Nazé.
After a short postdoctoral position in the same research group, I left Academia to work as an IT consultant in banking software. At that time, my parents suffered from heart disease and severe depression. Since I was their only child, I decided to take care of them rather than moving abroad to continue my scientific career. This personal choice and this period of my life make myself clearly understood how important Astronomy is to me.
Actually, when I say "I left Academia", this is not entirely true because my passion dictated me to pursue Astronomy during my free time to such an extent that my flow of publications remains uninterrupted. This passion also drove me to apply for an F.R.S-FNRS Postdoctoral researcher fellowship to join the University of Liège and work on the Luminous Blue Variable objects with Dr. Damien Hutsemékers. In December 2017, I was awarded the prestigious 'Pol & Christiane Swings' Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium (Sciences class) that rewards every four years a young researcher in the field of Astrophysics.
After two and a half years at Liège, I was contacted by Prof. Hugues Sana to join his team as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Astronomy of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. This choice was hard to me because I knew that, for increasing my chances to get a permanent position, I have to move abroad but the possibility to work with other world-wide experts of massive stars, such as Hugues, Prof. Jon Sundqvist, Prof. Alex de Koter, Prof. Leen Decin or Prof. Conny Aerts, was also a real opportunity to scientifically drive my career. I grew as a scientist and as a team leader, trying to drive my own science.
In 2021, I was offered a long-term contract as Senior Researcher at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, in the Astronomy & Astrophysics department, with the hope of becoming permanent. I also obtained the 'Stroobant' Prize, my second from the Royal Academy of Belgium (Sciences class) that rewards every two years a young researcher in the field of Astrophysics.
I was designated as Principal Investigator of the BIPASS project that aims to continue to promote the Belgo-Indian collaboration, started in 2016 through the BINA project. I am also involved in international consortia, including VLT/FLAMES Tarantula Survey, BLOeM, XShootU/ULYSSES, Plato where I will be the leader of the working group on "Stars with mass loss", UVEX, Arago, and MSE
In my spare time, I enjoy playing basketball, drawing, reading and spending time with my kids.