Monday, 09 December 2024

Introduction to Department of Astronomy

   The Department of Astronomy at Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of the newest and most rapidly developing astronomy centers in China. It was known as the Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics since 2012. After several years of rapid development, the Department of Astronomy was formally established in 2017.

   At present, the department has a total of 14 faculty members working on various areas in both theoretical and observational astrophysics. The faculty include many national prize winners, including 1 Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 Yangtze River Scholars, 3 National Ten-Thousand Plan Scholars, 5 National Outstanding Young Scholars. In particular, the department has assembled an influential team in cosmology and galaxy formation, and is actively seeking to expand into other fields of astronomy and astrophysics.

   The Department of Astronomy is currently involved in several international collaborative observation projects, including SDSS-IV, HSC, DESI, DECaLS, SKAand LSST. A number of open astronomical data are also widely used by the department, including PanSTARRs, COSMOS, UKIDSS, Planck and so on. Other observational resources include: CFHT, MMT, Magellan, Palomar Hale, JCMT, and China's domestic astronomical observation facility such as LAMOST. 

  In addition to the abundant observational resources, the department has superior computing equipments including the Gravity supercomputer (https://gravity-doc.github.io), ample research funds, and an active visitor program.It is also tightly connected to the astronomy division at the neighboring Tsung-Dao Lee Institute.

   The department currently hosts 11 postdocs coming from various countries, as well as 35 graduate students. In 2018 the department welcomed its first generation of undergraduate students.

   Despite its rapid growth over the past few years, the department is still actively looking for new faculty members and postdocs to join from anywhere in the world, irrespective of their research field in astronomy and astrophysics.