I want to understand our place in the Universe by building innovative radio telescopes and algorithms for catching flashes of light from other galaxies that signal extreme physics.

I am an assistant professor in high-energy astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam's Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy (UvA/API) and a visiting scientist at ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. I co-lead the AstroFlash research group and am supported by an ERC Starting Grant ("EnviroFlash"; Grant agreement No. 101223057) and an NWO Veni grant (VI.Veni.222.295).

• Email

  z.pleunis@uva.nl

• Office address

  C3.125
  Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy
  University of Amsterdam
  Science Park 904
  1098 XH Amsterdam
  The Netherlands

Research

The goal of my research is to unravel the origins of fast radio bursts (FRBs): luminous impulses of radio waves lasting only a fraction of a second that have mysterious origins outside of our Milky Way. I want to figure out why some FRBs repeat while others apparently do not and develop their use as astrophysical tools to better understand the Universe at large, which is possible as each FRB signal holds a record of the magnetized gas it has travelled through. I like finding new FRBs and pulsars with new telescopes or observing modes and I enjoy developing algorithms to enable this.

I am mainly a radio astronomer, but I have a broad experience across wavelengths, having led and collaborated in studies on pulsars and FRBs using data collected with various radio, optical and gamma-ray telescopes. I am a key member of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration that has revolutionized the study of FRBs in recent years. I also led the team that has discovered the lowest-frequency millisecond pulsars and FRBs with the LOFAR telescope.

Before moving back to Amsterdam, I was at the University of Toronto (2021 Sep-2023 Dec), where I held a Dunlap Postdoctoral Fellowship and was affiliated with Bryan Gaensler's and Keith Vanderlinde's research groups. I wrote a PhD thesis at McGill University on the detection and morphology of FRBs with the CHIME telescope, supervised by Victoria Kaspi. Before that, I wrote an MSc thesis at the University of Amsterdam on discovering millisecond pulsars with the LOFAR telescope.

Catching FRBs with CHIME/FRB and its Outriggers

The CHIME telescope (see photo below) is currently the world's best FRB discovery machine (finding a few new sources per day!). The telescope operates the octave from 400 to 800 MHz and the project to find FRBs is called CHIME/FRB. We are currently working towards being able to pin-point all FRBs we detect with CHIME/FRB to within their host galaxies (i.e., to subarcsecond resolution) by constructing smaller versions of the CHIME telescope ("Outriggers") at various locations in North America to perform very-long-baseline interferometry.



Catching transients at the lowest frequencies observable from Earth with LOFAR

We have opened a new window on FRBs by detecting bursts from repeating FRB sources down to 110 MHz with the LOFAR telescope. This array made of many small antennas is centered in the Netherlands but spreads out over all of Europe. Our team is currently working on a commensal survey for transients with LOFAR that will start searching for FRBs and long-period transients (LPTs) around 150 MHz nearly 24/7 some time in 2027.



Feel free to email me if you are interested in working on a research project together! Consider applying to our research master in Physics & Astronomy or to UvA/API's ASPIRE program or ASTRON's Summer Research Programme for funded summer research positions.

Team

The Netherlands half of the AstroFlash team at NAC 2026 with my trainees numbered:

1. Haotian Sun (MSc; co-advised w/ Jason Hessels)
2. That's me!
3. Rujuta Mokal (PhD)
4. Andreea Șuta (PhD)
5. Tia Nolan (MSc; co-advised w/ Rob Kavanagh)
6. Inés Pastor-Marazuela (postdoc; co-advised w/ Jason Hessels)
7. Dirk Kuiper (PhD; co-advised w/ Jason Hessels & Cees Bassa)
8. Sylvain Ranguin (PhD; co-advised w/ Jason Hessels & Antonia Rowlinson)
9. Danté Hewitt (postdoc)
10. Nina Kaplina (PhD)
11. Alex Moroianu (PhD; co-advised w/ Jason Hessels & Benito Marcote)

Publications

For a complete list, see ADS or arXiv. Some highlights follow, with underlined author names indicating students that I have advised.

• Tied-array beam flat-fielding, Kuiper, Bassa, ZP & Hessels, in press ADS
• The second CHIME/FRB catalog of fast radio bursts, CHIME/FRB Collaboration, 2026 ApJS 283, 34 ADS
• A Milliarcsecond Localization Associates FRB 20190417A with a Compact Persistent Radio Source and an Extreme Magnetoionic Environment, Moroianu et al., 2026 ApJL 996, 16 ADS
• CHIME/FRB Outriggers: Design Overview, CHIME/FRB Collaboration, 2025 ApJ 993, 55 ADS
• Improved Constraints on the Faraday Rotation toward Eight Fast Radio Bursts Using Dense Grids of Polarized Radio Galaxies, Pandhi, Gaensler, ZP et al., 2025 ApJ 982, 146 ADS
• Magnetospheric origin of a fast radio burst constrained using scintillation, Nimmo, ZP et al., 2025 Nature 637, 48 ADS
• Polarization properties of the 128 non-repeating fast radio bursts from the first CHIME/FRB baseband catalog, Pandhi, ZP, Mckinven et al., 2024 ApJ 968, 50 ADS
• Modeling the Morphology of Fast Radio Bursts and Radio Pulsars with fitburst, Fonseca, ZP, Breitman et al., 2024 ApJS 271, 49 ADS
• Propagation effects at low frequencies seen in the LOFAR long-term monitoring of the periodically active FRB 20180916B, Gopinath, Bassa, ZP et al., 2024 MNRAS 527, 4, pp.9872-9891 ADS
• CHIME/FRB discovery of 25 repeating fast radio burst sources, CHIME/FRB Collaboration (ZP corresponding author), 2023 ApJ 947, 83 ADS
• Fast radio burst morphology in the first CHIME/FRB catalog, ZP, Good, Kaspi et al., 2023 ApJ 923, 1 arXiv
• The first CHIME/FRB fast radio burst catalog, CHIME/FRB Collaboration, 2021, ApJS 257, 59 arXiv
• LOFAR detection of 110-188 MHz emission and frequency-dependent activity from FRB 20180916B, ZP, Michilli, Bassa et al., ApJL 911, L3 arXiv
• A bright millisecond-duration radio burst from a Galactic magnetar, CHIME/FRB Collaboration et al., 2020 Nature 587, 54 arXiv
• Periodic activity from a fast radio burst source, CHIME/FRB Collaboration et al., 2020 Nature 582, 351 arXiv
• The CHIME Fast Radio Burst project: system overview, CHIME/FRB Collaboration, 2018 ApJ 863, 48 arXiv
• LOFAR discovery of the fastest-spinning millisecond pulsar in the Galactic field, Bassa, ZP, Hessels et al., 2017 ApJL 846, L20 arXiv
• A millisecond pulsar discovery in a survey of unidentified Fermi gamma-ray sources with LOFAR, ZP, Bassa, Hessels et al., 2017 ApJL 846, L19 arXiv
• Enabling pulsar and fast transient searches using coherent dedispersion, Bassa, ZP, Hessels, 2017 Astronomy and Computing 18, 40 arXiv

In the press

• De Volkskrant wrote about the discovery of 25 repeating FRB sources by CHIME (in Dutch).
• Scientific American published a recap of our current understanding of FRBs.
• Our first catalog of FRBs was reported on by Sky & Telescope.
• EarthSky wrote about the lowest-frequency detection of FRBs with LOFAR.
• Vice, the Globe and Mail and the Associated Press wrote about the FRB-like burst from a Galactic magnetar that we detected with the CHIME telescope. You can hear me talk about this result on CBC radio's Quirks and Quarks and on BNR nieuwsradio (in Dutch).
• Sky & Telescope wrote about the first fast radio burst detected by CHIME.
• CHIME's first light was reported on by the Globe and Mail and CBC.

Teaching

At the University of Amsterdam, I am the coordinator/lecturer for Introduction to Cosmology in the BSc and the coordinator for Kaleidoscope in the MSc Physics & Astronomy. In 2025 I taught Programming for Astronomy & Astrophysics in the MSc.

In Fall 2022 I co-taught AST 3100 Astrophysical Transients with Professor Marten van Kerkwijk for graduate students in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto.

Recordings of the fast radio burst multi-wavelength follow-up workshop that we've held in Toronto and online April 25 and 26, 2023 are available on YouTube