Zheng Zhang
Astrophysicist · Cosmologist

Listening to the cosmos, reading its light.

I develop methods and theories that connect radio observations, weak gravitational lensing, and the evolving structures of the Universe.

Zheng Zhang
Zheng ZhangPostdoctoral Researcher · University of Manchester

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01 · The hydrogen Universe

Radio Cosmology

Neutral hydrogen fills the Universe, and its 21-cm line lets us watch cosmic history unfold — from the first stars to the large-scale structure of today. I pursue 21-cm cosmology in two complementary ways: intensity mapping, which charts cosmic structure over enormous volumes without resolving individual galaxies, and global-signal measurements with RHINO, an experiment I help build to capture the sky-averaged 21-cm spectrum.

  1. RHINO: a global 21-cm signal experiment
  2. Rheplicant: a differentiable digital twin for RHINO
  3. Bayesian calibration for 21-cm intensity mapping
  4. Mapping the anisotropic radio sky
Rendering of the RHINO pyramidal horn antenna with dimensions: a 7.3 by 6 metre aperture flare section atop a rectangular waveguide
The RHINO horn antenna — a 7.3 × 6 m aperture pointed at the zenith (Bull et al., Fig. 1).
Simulated convergence structure on a cosmological lightcone
02 · From geodesics to statistics

Weak Gravitational Lensing

I formulate weak lensing as a stochastic field theory, deriving observable n-point statistics from null-geodesic dynamics and cosmic structure.

  1. Statistical Field Theory for Weak Gravitational Lensing
  2. sft-wick formalism and package
  3. Conference slides · Aegina 2026
03 · Modelling, evolution, representation

Modelling Structure Across Scales

From spinning interstellar nanograins to the large-scale cosmic web, I build physical models of how structures form and evolve — and emulators that represent their statistics cheaply enough for large-scale inference.

04 · Open source

Pinned research software

The repositories selected on my GitHub profile.

01
RHINO-Experiment/rheplicant

A differentiable replica of a radio antenna — the same JAX model that simulates an observation calibrates it.

Python
02
StatFieldTheory/sft-wick

An open-source Python package that constructs diagram tables and computes their integrals numerically for stochastic field dynamics cast into a path-integral formulation.

Python
03
zzhang0123/limTOD

limTOD is a Python package for simulating Time-Ordered Data (TOD) from single-dish/autocorrelation observations.

Python
04
zzhang0123/MomentEmu

A lightweight, interpretable polynomial emulator for smooth mappings, implemented in pure Python.

Python
05
zzhang0123/MomentRFI

Iterative two-phase sigma-clipping for flagging Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) in radio cosmology waterfall data, using 2D polynomial surface fitting powered by [MomentEmu](https://github.com/zzhang0123/MomentEmu).

Jupyter Notebook
06
SpyDust/SpyDust

An improved implementation of SPDust for modeling spinning dust radiation

Jupyter Notebook
05 · Beyond the research map

There's more to the story.

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Cosmology at the University of Manchester. My longer education, academic lineage, students, and personal story now live on a dedicated page.

Read the full story →