About Me

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What I’m doing now

I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at JBCA, the University of Manchester, where I work on observational cosmology, with a focus on

• radio cosmology (HI intensity mapping, global 21cm sinal, Epoch of Reionisation tomography) and
• low-frequency foreground science (AME, RSB excess, high-dynamic-range behavior of the spectrum, Polarisation and Faraday rotation, etc.).

Specifically, my research interest is in formalising detailed astrophysical processes and accounting for various observational effects - instrumental, dynamical, modified radiative transfer, geometrical and topological, and more - in cosmological observations. I also work on the development of methods and tools to accurately characterise these effects. Recently, I have been fascinated by the use of perturbative statistical methods to understanding and characterising the ensemble behaviour of the models of astrophysical and cosmological processes, as well as ultra-high dimensional Bayesian inference using the Gibbs sampling method. As both a theorist and an observer, my approach to science extraction is to model physical processes with high accuracy, while abstracting out as many environmental effects as possible. Methodologically, my goal is to fit models and summary statistics of systematic environmental effects through large joint posterior distribution functions.

In addition to the areas mentioned, I have a strong interest and ongoing reflections on gravitational phenomena and their observational effects, the topology of the Universe, and the transition from quantum to classical fields on cosmic scales - in particular quantum decoherence effects. Recently, in my spare time, I've been envisioning the development of a coordinate-free approach to cosmology!

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More about me

Bio

Pronouns: He/Him

Title: Doctorate in the physics of the universe (DOCTORAT PHYSIQUE DE L’UNIVERS)

Marital Status: Married

Nationality: Chinese

Location: Manchester, United Kingdom

Profile: Dog lover, nature person, and self-proclaimed “citizen of the Universe”

Life and Education Journey

I completed my PhD in Physics of the Universe at the Astroparticle and Cosmology (APC) Laboratory, Université Paris Cité, from November 2020 to October 2023. During the first half of the program, I was based at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS, Paris). Prior to that, I earned my MSc in Physics from Brown University (2018–2020) and my undergraduate degree in Applied Physics from Shanghai University (2014–2018). My earlier education includes high school in Hai’an and primary school in Sunzhuang village, spanning from 2002 to 2014. I was born in 1996.

Ancestry

I can’t go back too far. My grandfather was adopted. The man who adopted him, my great-grandfather, was a tofu maker/seller in the village, but unfortunately the craft was not passed on.

Academic Gossips

My PhD supervisor Martin once told me that he and I had Italian ancestors in academia, and Nick, who was also my supervisor, once teased me (after a friendly debate) that my style (in GR) was that of Steven Weinberg, “playing violin with boxing gloves”. This sparked my interest in studying academic archaeology (or academic lineage)!

(The arrows indicate the relationship from PhD advisor to student.)

The Home Team

Our little family includes my wife and myself, our Bengal cat, Youzi, along with two cherished baobab trees, Jumbo and Zhuangzhuang, which we brought with us from Paris to Manchester. While living in the US, I raised a loving German Shepherd named Summer, who now enjoys life with my parents in my faraway hometown.