Assistant Professor

I am an astrophysicist. Here are my:
Research interest:
My major research direction is high energy astrophysics. The astrophysical objects I have been studying include gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), pulsars (PSRs), and magnetars (SGRs and AXPs). Other directions I work on include active galactic nuclei (AGNs), cosmology, neutrino astrophysics, and extrasolar planets.
I am interested in the mechanisms with which all
these
objects radiate across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, including
gamma-ray,
X-ray, UV, optical, IR, and radio. I am also interested in the possible
non-electromagnetic signals, such as neutrinos and gravitational waves,
from some of these objects. My research activities include seeking for
theoretical interpretations and predictions of various phenomena and
proposing
observational tests to the theories.
I am a team member of NASA's Swift
mission. This is a dedicated satellite to explore the mysterious
cosmological gamma-ray bursts. Recent major discoveries from the Swift
collaboration include:
Because of these discoveries, the PI Neil Gehrels and the Swift team
won the 2007
Bruno Rossi Prize of the High Energy Astrophysics Division,
American Astronomical Society.
Here are my recent review articles on GRB research:
International Journal of Modern Physics A
(Zhang & Meszaros 2004)
Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics
(Zhang 2007)
My recent paper on a canonical GRB X-ray lightcurve
from the Swift XRT observations and its interpretation was identified as
the New Hot
Paper in Space Science by Essential
Science Indicators in July 2007. Here is the paper,
and here
is a brief interview of me about this paper.