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
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Burke, C. J., Liu, X., & Shen, Y. (2024). Gemini near-infrared spectroscopy of high-redshift Fermi Blazars: Jetted Black Holes in the early universe were overly massive. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 527(3), 5356-5365. Article stad3592. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3592
Akiba, T., Dexter, J., Brandt, W. N., Ho, L. C., Homayouni, Y., Schneider, D. P., Shen, Y., & Trump, J. R. (2023). Reprocessing Models for the Optical Light Curves of Hypervariable Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project. Astrophysical Journal, 953(2), Article 124. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ace1e1
Almeida, A., Anderson, S. F., Argudo-Fernández, M., Badenes, C., Barger, K., Barrera-Ballesteros, J. K., Bender, C. F., Benitez, E., Besser, F., Bird, J. C., Bizyaev, D., Blanton, M. R., Bochanski, J., Bovy, J., Brandt, W. N., Brownstein, J. R., Buchner, J., Bulbul, E., Burchett, J. N., ... Zasowski, G. (2023). The Eighteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Targeting and First Spectra from SDSS-V. Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, 267(2), Article 44. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/acda98
Benítez, E., Ibarra-Medel, H., Negrete, C. A., Cruz-González, I., Rodríguez-Espinosa, J. M., Liu, X., & Shen, Y. (2023). 3D Spectroscopy with GTC-MEGARA of the Triple AGN Candidate in SDSS J102700.40+174900.8. Astrophysical Journal, 952(1), Article 45. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/acce3e
Burke, C. J., Shen, Y., Liu, X., Natarajan, P., Caplar, N., Bellovary, J. M., & Wang, Z. F. (2023). Dwarf AGNs from variability for the origins of seeds (DAVOS): Intermediate-mass black hole demographics from optical synoptic surveys. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 518(2), 1880-1904. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stac2478
