Contact Information
1002 W. Green St.
Urbana, IL
Research Interests
Observational Cosmology
Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei
Galaxy Formation and Evolution
Surveys and Time-Domain Science
Research Description
I am an extragalactic observer. I mainly work on a range of topics centered on quasars and supermassive black holes (SMBHs), to understand the physics and evolution of these exotic objects in the cosmological context. Specifically, I work on the large-scale structure traced by quasars, the demography of SMBHs as a function of cosmic time, the phenomenology and physics of black hole accretion, and the co-evolution of black holes and host galaxies. I use multi-wavelength survey data and dedicated observing programs to carry out these studies.
Education
Astronomy, PHD, Princeton University
Courses Taught
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Burke, C. J., Shen, Y., Blaes, O., Gammie, C. F., Horne, K., Jiang, Y-F., Liu, X., Mchardy, I. M., Morgan, C. W., Scaringi, S., & Yang, Q. (2021). A characteristic optical variability time scale in astrophysical accretion disks. Science, 373(6556), 789-792. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abg9933
Burke, C. J., Liu, X., Chen, Y. C., Shen, Y., & Guo, H. (2021). On the AGN nature of broad balmer emission in four low-redshift metal-poor galaxies. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 504(1), 543-550. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stab912
Li, J. I. H., Shen, Y., Ho, L. C., Brandt, W. N., Bontà, E. D., Fonseca Alvarez, G., Grier, C. J., Hernandez Santisteban, J. V., Homayouni, Y., Horne, K., Peterson, B. M., Schneider, D. P., & Trump, J. R. (2021). The sloan digital sky survey reverberation mapping project: The MBH-host relations at 0.2 ≲ z ≲ 0.6 from reverberation mapping and hubble space telescope imaging. Astrophysical Journal, 906(2), [103]. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/abc8e6
Liao, W. T., Chen, Y. C., Liu, X., Miguel Holgado, A., Guo, H., Gruendl, R., Morganson, E., Shen, Y., Davis, T., Kessler, R., Martini, P., McMahon, R. G., Allam, S., Annis, J., Avila, S., Banerji, M., Bechtol, K., Bertin, E., Brooks, D., ... Walker, A. (2021). Discovery of a candidate binary supermassive black hole in a periodic quasar from circumbinary accretion variability. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 500(3), 4025-4041. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3055
Matthews, B. M., Shemmer, O., Dix, C., Brotherton, M. S., Myers, A. D., Andruchow, I., Brandt, W. N., Ferrero, G. A., Gallagher, S. C., Green, R., Lira, P., Plotkin, R. M., Richards, G. T., Runnoe, J. C., Schneider, D. P., Shen, Y., Strauss, M. A., & Wills, B. J. (2021). Placing high-redshift quasars in perspective: A catalog of spectroscopic properties from the gemini near infrared spectrograph-distant quasar survey. Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 252(2), [abc705]. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/abc705
