
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
Chen, Y., Liu, X., Foord, A., Shen, Y., Oguri, M., Chen, N., Di Matteo, T., Holgado, M., Hwang, H., & Zakamska, N. (2023). A close quasar pair in a disk–disk galaxy merger at z = 2.17. Nature, 616(7955), 45-49. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05766-6
Chen, N., Di Matteo, T., Ni, Y., Tremmel, M., DeGraf, C., Shen, Y., Holgado, A. M., Bird, S., Croft, R., & Feng, Y. (2023). Properties and evolution of dual and offset AGN in the ASTRID simulation at z ∼ 2. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, [stad834]. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad834
Wang, Z. F., Burke, C. J., Liu, X., & Shen, Y. (2023). Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Optical Variability of Broad-line Dwarf AGNs from the Zwicky Transient Facility. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, [stad532]. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad532
Yang, Q., & Shen, Y. (2023). A Southern Photometric Quasar Catalog from the Dark Energy Survey Data Release 2. Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 264(1), [9]. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ac9ea8
Abdurro'Uf, Accetta, K., Aerts, C., Silva Aguirre, V., Ahumada, R., Ajgaonkar, N., Filiz Ak, N., Alam, S., Allende Prieto, C., Almeida, A., Anders, F., Anderson, S. F., Andrews, B. H., Anguiano, B., Aquino-Ortíz, E., Aragón-Salamanca, A., Argudo-Fernández, M., Ata, M., Aubert, M., ... Zhu, K. (2022). The Seventeenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Complete Release of MaNGA, MaStar, and APOGEE-2 Data. Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 259(2), [35]. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/ac4414