Personal Story - Yuxiang Qin
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue50 1–30 April 2024
My name is Yuxiang Qin, and if /yǔ/, /ɕi̯áŋ/, and /tɕʰín/ make any sense to you, I hope they can be helpful for pronunciation. The given name actually means 'flying in the universe', even though I doubt becoming an astronomer was what my parents wished for when they first met me. I was born in a lesser-known city in China called Hefei, perhaps best known for a historical event in which a team of 800 cavalry defeated a 200,000-strong army in the 3rd century AD. If you happen to find yourself nearby, I highly recommend visiting the Yellow Mountains. Legend has it that there is no mountain you need to see if you have already visited five particular ones, but if you have been to the Yellow Mountains, there is no need to see those five.
I attended the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in my hometown because they offered early enrolment for high schoolers and, more importantly, because I had zero idea how easily my parents could visit (check on) me when they lived a mere stone's throw away. Well, the cherry on top is the university offers full autonomy when it comes to the subject you would like to major in. Unlike my peers who were still soul-searching, I picked astronomy at a very early stage. Thanks to the sweet venom fed by those who copied my lab log all the time, I fancied myself one day as a well-known experimentalist in astronomy (whatever that means) and eventually picked an observational stellar analysis for my undergraduate thesis. Boy, was I mistaken. Little did I know, I'd be spending my days swimming through a sea of spectra from the LAMOST survey. By the end of it, I could identify stellar signatures in my sleep or, to be more accurate, dream of being whipped by the spectra in the daytime. One thing I learned from the summer of 2014 was not that late-type dwarfs tend to have high UV excesses, but rather that I was destined to be a theorist.
Fast forward, I obtained my PhD from the University of Melbourne and pursued a postdoc at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, where I acquired my Italian name, Giacomo. Please excuse any offence if I hesitate at the suggestion of a Hawaiian pizza -- my Italian friends have educated me very well. Then, amid the pandemic, I was fortunate to return to Melbourne. Having baked millions of universes in my HPC oven over the years, I've honed my expertise in computational astrophysics, with a keen interest in galaxy formation, reionisation, and 21-cm cosmology. I advocate for the integration of Bayesian statistics to support scientific discoveries, thrive on developing simplistic models to interpret large-scale behaviours in complex systems, and value the application of modern machine-learning techniques in astrophysics studies. With these values, I'm embarking on my DECRA project, 'Synergy between future 21-cm experiments and physical cosmology,' at RSAA. My goal is to offer new insights into the origins of the first galaxies and dark matter through ongoing galaxy observations and future 21-cm experiments.
P.S. This photo was taken at Fort Nepean in Melbourne, where I spent Easter with my family. However, if you happen to spot me along the coastline, chances are I'll be wrapped in my trusty 5mm wetsuit, engaging in sustainable(!) fishing practices. Lemme know if you would like some free fish.
Yuxiang Qin
