I am a staff scientist at Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), on the campus of the California Institute of Technology.  I'm now working for two projects: GALEX and SWIRE.  The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) is a satellite which has been surveying the sky in the ultraviolet since its launch on April 28th, 2003.  The Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic Survey (SWIRE) is a Spitzer legacy project.  In both teams, my duty is to develop models that can predict major observational properties of sources to be detected in these missions.  I love my models.  After many years working on them, they are almost like my kids.  But I won't be sad if the real sources behave differently from my model predictions.  In fact, I'll be thrilled.  After all, the fun of doing science is to find unknowns instead of knowns . . .

My training as an astrophysicist is mainly in the field of extra-galactic infrared (IR) astronomy, which has always been the center of my research throughout my career.  So I feel quite at home in IPAC, which is NASA's official infrared astrophysics data center.  Before this, I have been wandering in the world for quite some time:  after I went abroad from China in 1985, I was in Italy for 5 years and in Germany for 7 years.

Research interest:

-Galaxy Evolution

-Interacting Galaxies

-Starburst Galaxies

-Infrared Emission of Normal Galaxies

* This is the 15 micron ISO image of Stephan's Quintet (NGC7317, 7318A, 7318B, 7319, and 7320).  The bright source above the map center, SQ-A, is a starburst in the intragroup medium (IGM).  It is likely to be triggered by the high speed collision (~1000km/sec) between NGC7318B and the IGM.  The image is taken from Xu et al. (1999, ApJ 512, 178).
 
 

(Last Updated: Aug 2004)