Feng Sheng Hu, dean of Arts & Sciences aimed to hire new faculty members to help drive transformative change across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. In July, 2022, the Department of Physics welcomed three researchers in astrophysics, joining the already strong astrophysics faculty and establishing WashU as a leader in this area.

Andrina Nicola joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. Nicola works at the intersection of theoretical and observational cosmology, where she is developing novel data analysis methods using machine learning and artificial intelligence to combine data from several cosmological probes to better constrain cosmological models and shed light on the physics of galaxy formation.

 

 

 

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Yajie Yuan joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor. Yuan works on building first-principles models for the high energy processes powered by black holes and neutron stars, using both theoretical analysis and state-of-the-art, large scale numerical simulations to model plasma dynamics and particle acceleration.

 

 

 

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Alex Chen joined the Department of Physics as a research assistant professor. Chen is a theoretical astrophysicist using computer simulations to understand the physics of plasmas near extreme objects such as  neutron stars and black holes.

 

 

 

 

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