Contact Information
1002 W. Green Street
Urbana IL 61801
M/C 221
Biography
Colin is a graduate student in astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Research Interests
Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)
Survey science & data science
Accretion physics
Machine learning applications in astronomy
Research Description
Colin is advised by Professor Xin Liu. Our goal is to understand how supermassive black holes formed and came to occupy nearly every massive galaxy in the Universe. Currently, I am using optical surveys to study and search for intermediate mass black holes in active galactic nuclei.
Education
B.S. Physics, Purdue University
Awards and Honors
Additional Campus Affiliations
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Journal Articles
C. J. Burke, Y. Shen, O. Blaes, C. F. Gammie, K. Horne, Y.-F. Jiang, X. Liu, I. McHardy, C.W. Morgan, S. Scaringi, Q. Yang. “A characteristic optical variability time scale in astrophysical accretion disks.” Science 373(6556), 789 (2021).
C. J. Burke, X. Liu, Y.-.C Chen, Y. Shen, H. Guo “On the AGN Nature of Broad Balmer Emission in Four Low-Redshift Metal-Poor Galaxies.” MNRAS 504, 534 (2021).
C. J. Burke, Y. Shen, Y.-C. Chen, S. Scargini, C. A. Faucher-Giguere, X. Liu, and Q. Yang. "Optical Variability of the Dwarf AGN NGC 4395 from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite." ApJ 899, 2 (2020).
H. Guo, C. J. Burke, X. Liu, et. al. "Dark Energy Survey Identification of A Low-Mass Active Galactic Nucleus at Redshift 0.823 from Optical Variability." MNRAS 496, 3 (2020).
C. J. Burke, V. Baldassare, X. Liu, et. al. "The Curious Case of PHL 293B: A Long-Lived Transient in a Metal-Poor Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxy." ApJ Letters 894, L5 (2020).
C. J. Burke, P. D. Aleo, Y.-C. Chen, X. Liu, J. R. Peterson, G. H. Sembroski, and J. Y.-Y. Lin. "Deblending and Classifying Astronomical Sources with Mask R-CNN Deep Learning." MNRAS 490, 3 (2019).
C. J. Burke, J. R. Peterson, E. Egami, J. M. Leisenring, G. H. Sembroski, and M. J. Rieke. "PhoSim-NIRCam: Photon-by-photon image simulations of the James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera." JATIS 5, 3 (2019).