​Pre Gaia

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The story starts with my obsession with Physics in high school. During that time, I was selected to get experimental trainings for National competition in physics at Nanjing University, which I joined later for my undergraduate studies. Through interactions with researchers in department of physics, mathematics, and purple mountain observatory, I got millions of inspirations and also got exposed to the 'fancy' world of theoretical physics world , such as string theory from my advisor at that time.

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Then I started my PhD in Minnesota, US, with a goal to do theoretical particle physics research. However, life put me in a nuclear-astrophysics group. Through my work on chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies, I developed two research interests: dwarf galaxies and r-process (one of two processes to make elements heavier than Fe), both of which now become my main research focus. The third interest I caught later is Machine Learning. I still remember the enthusiasm of entering this new era when AlphaGO was announced. Life has always been full of adventures but I honestly had little idea about what to dedicated to at that time.

 

After Gaia

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During my first postdoc, one day in Nov 2016, I met an N-body simulator who told me about Gaia, and the potential to use machine learning tools to search for dwarf galaxy streams. I was intrigued by this idea right away, which connects my two obsessions: dwarf galaxies and ML. I started to build StarGO (Stars' Galactic Origin), a neural-network-based method to search for dwarf galaxy streams, and made it work with mock simulation data within three months. After Gaia DR2 came out in April 2018, I applied StarGO to various datasets and discovered new stellar streams and substructures.

 

After identifying these ancient stellar debris, I have been obtaining high-resolution spectra for their member stars using telescopes around the world. The ultimate goal is to decode nucleosynthesis (such as r-process) and galaxy evolution in these Pristine labs, i.e. ancient and low-metallicity dwarf galaxies that are close to the first galaxies in the early Universe. Very luckily, I joined the Pristine survey collaboration in 2020, which has been dedicated to search for low metallicity stars in the Milky Way since 2017. Attracted by the largest treasure box of very metal poor stars in the world and the wonderland of streams, I came to Strasbourg Observatory in March 2021, where I joined the Galactic Archaeology group there, and got to connected with archaeologists in France and Europe 🙂

 

My adventure in Astronomy started with the most fun data challenge offered by Gaia. Ever since, I have been exploring around and constantly amazed by the old school Astronomy, especially those moments of collecting photons from old stars in telescopes at summits. All of these experiences let me decide to continue my journey in the Local Group, the place where we can observe individual stars 🤩