Dr. Bing Zhang

 

Dr. Bing Zhang is a theoretical astrophysicist conducting research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he is currently serving as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and as an Associate Dean for Research in UNLV’s College of Sciences.  He also became a Fellow of the American Physics Society in 2015.  His research is focused on high-energy astrophysics, involving the study of some of the universe’s most powerful energetic phenomena, such as gamma-ray bursts, radio pulsars, and the bodies that produce them, such as black holes, neutron stars, and magnetars.

Dr. Zhang’s passion for astronomy began while he was a young student living in China.  He was fascinated by the concepts of space, time, and infinity, and he decided to pursue these interests by enrolling at Peking University.  Though originally a geophysics major, he later entered Peking University’s graduate school for astrophysics and obtained his PhD in 1997.  After serving as a research associate for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and completing his postdoctoral work at Penn State, Dr. Zhang joined UNLV in 2004, where he still conducts research today.

Currently, Dr. Zhang is studying the phenomena of fast-radio bursts (FRB’s), mysterious radio wave emissions that emanate from the far reaches of outer space.  Recently, Zhang and his international research team’s work on determining the source of FRB’s was published in the journal Nature.  Using his team’s own radio telescope and those of two other collaborators, the researchers provided evidence that FRB’s can originate from magnetars, which are a class of dense neutron stars that are known as some of the most magnetized bodies in the universe.  The team also showed that FRB’s can emanate very close to home, with one radio burst being detected from within the Milky Way.  Though Zhang agrees that his work is not exactly done for a practical purpose, he wishes to stoke curiosities with his research and hopes that the work of astrophysicists today may be used for good in the future.

References

1. http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~bzhang/

2. https://www.unlv.edu/news-story/astrophysicist-bing-zhang-elected-aps-fellow

3. https://phys.org/news/2020-11-astronomers-clues-unveil-mystery-fast.html