I am an assistant professor at IEA. The primary focus of my research has been the characterization of primitive small bodies (i.e. asteroids and comets), over a wide range of wavelengths, using diverse observing techniques.
Current Position: Assistant Professor
Projects
- I am conducting a systematic NIR spectroscopic survey of comets (both short-period and long-period) to search for water ice features, using a suite of facilities, including JWST, VLTs, Magellan, Gemini and IRTF telescopes. The goal of this project is to provide strong observational evidence to answer the hotly debated questions: What is the water ice content of comets? What were the required conditions for the formation of the protoplanetary disk from the Solar Nebula?
- I am working on mapping the thermal emissions from large dust particles over four ALMA bands, 3, 4, 6, and 7 to yield strong constraints on the millimeter-sized grains, which dominate the coma mass of comets, via dust modeling. This study will improve our understanding of the formation of the protoplanetary disk of our Sun and possible disk processes for planet formation around other stars.
- I am using the second generation extreme adaptive-optics (AO) instruments, such as SPHERE at VLT, to study asteroids and comets. The goal of this project is to obtain detailed shapes, precise sizes and topographic features of large asteroids with diameter D>100 km. For comet observations, we aim to constrain the nucleus size and shape and to search for potential jets and fragments near the nucleus.
Highlights
Minor planet (9723) named BinYang
Publications
Extracurricular activities
I like hiking, badminton, reading and watching movies.