Ke Wang observes high-mass star formation at high-resolution. He is an expert in submillimeter interferometry and has served in the European ALMA Regional Center and the SMA operations team for more than 5 years. His research characterizes the initial conditions of high-mass star formation throughout the Galaxy by observing various samples of molecular clouds in different Galactic environments. Observations at multiple scales are made using submm/mm/cm interferometers including ALMA, SMA, and VLA, and space- and ground-based single-dish telescopes including Herschel, GBT 100m, Effelsberg 100m, Nobeyama 45m, IRAM 30m, JCMT 15m, APEX 12m, CSO 10m, and SMT 10m. Currently, he mainly works on three projects:
(1) resolving starless infrared dark clouds; he has discovered one of the few known high-mass prestellar cores, a long-sought key observable for a leading theoretical model of star formation;
(2)
a Galaxy-wide census of the largest molecular filaments; he has made the first census of the densest, coldest, velocity-coherent large-scale (>10 pc) filaments in the Milky Way; and
(3) a systematic survey of dense molecular clouds in the outer Galaxy; he is principal investigator of the ESO Public Survey SAMPLING (SMT "All-sky" Mapping of PLanck Interstellar Nebulae in the Galaxy) and co-investigator of other complementary surveys, including superMALT, SEDIGISM, and SCOPE.
Career path:
2018-present: Assistant Professor, KIAA-PKU
2015-2018: Associate, ESO/ALMA (Garching, Germany)
2012-2015: ESO Fellow, ESO/ALMA (Garching, Germany)
2011-2012: Erasmus Fellow, Kapteyn Astronomical Institute (Groningen, Netherlands)
2006-2012: PhD in Astrophysics, Peking University (Beijing, China)
2008-2011: SMA Pre-doctoral Fellow, Harvard CfA (Cambridge, MA, USA)
