Outreach website

Nikhef's Outreach activities

Want to find out more about our research? On our Outreach website you will find all our outreach activities organised by Nikhef in Amsterdam for the general public, students and teachers. See you at Nikhef!

Go to the Outreach site
Research Spotlight

Auger: Cosmic rays

Nikhef scientists, together with colleagues from around the world, perform research at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, an international observatory for the detection of ultra-high-energy cosmic radiation, located on the plains of western Argentina. They do so to learn more about the nature and origins of this mysterious cosmic radiation.

Read more
Research Spotlight

LHCb: Antimatter and b-quarks

Nikhef is member of the LHCb experiment, one of the detectors at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. Here, together with international colleagues, Nikhef scientists try to find answers to the many questions surrounding topics such as matter and anti-matter.

Read more
Technology at Nikhef

Technology departments

The technology departments at Nikhef employ about 80 people. They support the scientific projects by designing and building (parts of) detectors, accelerators, readout and control systems, and computer and network infrastructures.

Read more
Research

Astroparticle physics

Astroparticle physics combines physics and astronomy. In the cosmos, very strong magnetic fields create what can be considered a ‘natural’ particle accelerator. To perform astrophysics research, scientists ‘just’ need to build the right detectors. Nikhef is active in KM3NeT, Auger, XENON1T/nT and Virgo.

View projects
News

KM3NeT detects the highest energy neutrino ever observed

The KM3NeT Collaboration announces the detection from the abyss of the Mediterranean Sea of a cosmic neutrino with a record-breaking energy of about 220 PeV.

Read more
Research

Particle Physics

In particle physics, very large detectors are used to study elementary particles. Particles such as protons are accelerated in a particle accelerator, and made to collide with each other. Nikhef is active in ALICE, ATLAS and LHCb at CERN.

View projects

National Institute for Subatomic Physics

Welcome to Nikhef. We are the Dutch National Institute for Subatomic Physics. Our institute performs research into the elementary building blocks of our Universe, their mutual forces and the structure of space and time.
Lees meer >>

Please note that some of the content on our homepage and further pages has not been translated into English yet.

Recent news

22 July 2025

Record expansion for KM3NeT neutrino telescope

Over the past two weeks, 18 new detection units for the KM3NeT neutrino detector have been installed on the seabed off the coast of Sicily and connected to…

17 July 2025

Veni grants for three young Nikhef researchers

Science funding organization NWO has awarded Veni grants to three Nikhef researchers to further develop their groundbreaking ideas. Each will receive a maximum of €320,000, sufficient for three…

14 July 2025

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observes most massive black hole merger to date

The collaborating gravitational wave experiments LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) have reported the detection of the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed with gravitational waves. The merger produced…

Future events

4 September / 5 December 2025

Profielwerkstukken op 4 september, 16 oktober en 5 december

Je zit in 6 vwo, je bent heel nieuwsgierig naar subatomaire deeltjes en je moet binnenkort aan de slag met je profielwerkstuk. Dan kun je terecht bij Nikhef!…
Placeholder image for events Placeholder image for events
4 October 2025

Science Day 2025

The Science Day 2025 will be held on 4 October. The Science Day (formerly Open Day) of Amsterdam Science Park is a collaboration of Amsterdam Science Park (Science…