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
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Astronomy
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Burke, C. J., Stone, Z., Shen, Y., & Jiang, Y. F. (2026). Too Quiet for Comfort: Local Little Red Dots Lack Variability over Decades. Astrophysical Journal, 1004(1), Article 16. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae6b89
Jiang, Y., Shen, Y., Liu, X., Zakamska, N., Zhuang, M. Y., Gross, A. C., Li, J., Chen, Y. C., & Ishikawa, Y. (2026). Galactic-scale Quasar Pairs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Gaia DR3. Astrophysical Journal, 998(1), Article 80. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ae31eb
Kollmeier, J. A., Rix, H. W., Aerts, C., Aird, J., Alfaro, P. V., Almeida, A., Anderson, S. F., Arseneau, S. M., Assef, R. J., Aviram, S., Aydar, C., Badenes, C., Bandyopadhyay, A., Barger, K., Barkhouser, R. H., Bauer, F. E., Behmard, A., Bender, C., Besser, F., ... de J. Zermeño, R. (2026). Sloan Digital Sky Survey. V. Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy. Astronomical Journal, 171(1), Article 52. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ae0576
Liu, W., Fan, X., Li, H., Green, R., Yang, J., Jin, X., Lyu, J., Pudoka, M., Zhu, Y., Bañados, E., Belladitta, S., Connor, T., Costa, T., Decarli, R., Eilers, A. C., Jun, H. D., Marshall, M. A., Mazzucchelli, C., Schindler, J. T., ... Li, M. (2026). Extreme galaxy-scale outflows are frequent among luminous early quasars. Nature, 653(8114), 368-372. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10477-9
Merz, G., Zhuang, M. Y., Li, J., Yang, Q., Shen, Y., Liu, X., & Crenshaw, J. F. (2026). PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS IN JWST DEEP FIELDS: A PIXEL-BASED ALTERNATIVE WITH DEEPDISC. Open Journal of Astrophysics, 9. https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.156099