Personal Story

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue35 1–31 December 2022

I come from Shenzhen in the Cantonese province of China. From an early age, I was immersed in different cultures in China and overseas due to the importance of Canton in international trade. Hong Kong is about one hour away from my apartment by train. The first McDonald’s in China opened in the shopping district only a fifteen-minute walk away from my apartment the same year I was born. Until recently, all of Apple’s products were manufactured in factories in my hometown. I learned to speak three Chinese dialects and English growing up in a melting pot of cultures. My favourite place to visit in my childhood was the Window to the World park where miniature-scale landmarks from around the world were put on display and cultural events such as the Carnival of Rio de Janeiro and Halloween were celebrated. The miniature train set was always the highlight of my trips.

I left China for the United States for my college education and ended up spending six years in Madison, Wisconsin. I picked up archery as a hobby and spent many cold nights around a campfire making hotdogs and s’mores. I started ice skating the last winter I spent in Wisconsin.  At uni, I studied political science with an emphasis on American politics and applied mathematics. I then obtained a Master’s degree in public administration, specialising in cost-benefit analysis of public policies. My journey in astronomy started when I met my undergraduate supervisor, Elena D’Onghia, in Astronomy 101. It was the first time that I had studied astronomy because my physics curriculum in high school did not include astronomy. I went to Elena’s office almost every week to ask questions because I was intrigued. By the end of the semester, Elena could recognize my footsteps as soon as I stepped out of the elevator. Elena recruited me for an undergraduate research project rediscovering open and globular clusters in the Milky Way through chemistry alone. 

I came to Australia to complete my PhD in 2018 and switched my project to galactic chemical evolution models. My primary scientific objective is to understand the formation of the two [alpha/Fe] sequences seen in the Milky Way and estimate the fundamental parameters of physical processes in the Milky Way through age-abundance relations obtained with highly precise stellar age measurements. Since arriving at RSAA, I have learnt a great deal from others’ research on gas feedback and extragalactic observations. I bought a camera after arriving in Australia and have since become a semi-professional photographer. If anyone is interested, they can visit my website https://www.erwinchenphoto.com/ or my Instagram https://www.instagram.com/erwin_chen_photo/. 

Boquan Erwin Chen