About me
I am an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University. Before joining MSU, I was a physics faculty member at Bard College during 2020-2023, an Einstein Fellow at Boston University during 2019-2020 supported by the NASA Hubble Fellowship. In 2016-2019, I was a postdoc scholar and Heising-Simons Fellow at MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and MIT Department of Physics, working with Dr. Frederick K. Baganoff and Prof. Kerstin Perez. My research focuses on observational high-energy astrophysics, including supermassive black hole accretion and feedback, origin of Galactic cosmic-rays and data analysis of large surveys. I study current flaring activities of the Galactic center supermassive black hole Sgr A* andreconstruct its past activities, aiming to understand supermassive black hole activity cycle, particle acceleration mechanism, and physics under strong gravitational field. In recent years ly I developed an particle astrophysics project on probing Galactic cosmic-ray particles at MeV through PeV energy scales using innovative methods, aiming to understand the origin of Galactic cosmic-rays, particle acceleration mechanisms and dark matter nature. Most recently I have been leading a project on the discovery of a 40 keV source at merely 1 parsec from the Galactic center supermassive black hole. Here is my Bard College Website.
I obtained my Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia Univeristy in 2016. I did my thesis research on high-energy X-ray obserevations of the Galactic center and the Galactic plane using the NuSTAR space telescope, under supervision of Prof. Chuck Hailey. My research project "Investigating the Physics of Hard X-ray Outbursts from the Galactic Center Supermassive black hole Sgr A*" was selected for funding by NASA headquarters via the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) program. As a member of the NuSTAR Galactic plane survey team, I conducted observation plannning for ~1 Ms Galactic plane survey campaign during the NuSTAR baseline mission in 2012-2014, and continued to be responsible for target selection and observation planning for the Galactic plane legacy program during 2014-2018. I led the analysis of the Galactic center supermassive black hole, molecular clouds and non-thermal filaments.
Before joining the Columbia NuSTAR group, I obtained my bachelor's degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing. I conducted my bachelor thesis research at Tsinghua Center for Astrophysics (THCA). I designed and performed experiments to prove the solidity of a novel approach to obtain super high angular resolution imaging for coded-mask X-ray telescopes.
