Dr. Yuhan Yao
KIAA welcomes Dr. Yuhan Yao as our newest faculty member. Dr. Yao is a leading young researcher in time-domain astronomy and observational high-energy astrophysics.
Dr. Yao received her B.S. in Astronomy from Peking University in 2018 and her Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology in 2023. From August 2023 to June 2026, she conducted postdoctoral research as a Miller Fellow at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Yao’s research focuses on high-energy transients powered by black holes, such as tidal disruption events and luminous fast blue optical transients. These brief but energetic cosmic explosions offer unique opportunities to uncover otherwise dormant black holes and investigate black hole formation and evolution, accretion physics, and relativistic outflows under extreme conditions. She combines large samples discovered by modern time-domain surveys with multiwavelength observations spanning the X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and radio bands. Her work has advanced the use of tidal disruption events as probes of the wandering black hole population, extended measurements of the black hole mass function toward the intermediate-mass regime, and shed new light on super-Eddington accretion and jet formation.
Dr. Yao’s return to PKU will strengthen PKU astronomy in time-domain astronomy, high-energy astrophysics, and black hole studies. Her expertise in multi-wavelength observations will also foster closer collaboration between observational and theoretical researchers and provide valuable guidance to our students.
