Host: Dong Lai

Join Tencent Meeting：https://meeting.tencent.com/dm/1RBJBcSrlxjF

Meeting ID: 890507139 (no password）

Abstract:

Astronomical surveys hold immense discovery potential, but unlocking their secrets often requires creative mining. I will discuss strategies to extract insights from data. First, I will present my discovery of buoyant "icebergs" in white dwarf stars and hidden resonance structures in the Milky Way, both of which are enabled by novel data analyses with guidance from physics. Next, I will discuss the frontier of decoding complex datasets in astrophysics, with new techniques that achieve neural-net performance while preserving interpretability. These cases highlight a critical lesson: discovery is driven not only by new data, but also by innovative ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries. I will conclude with how these strategies can be applied to next-generation sky surveys to open new discovery spaces.

Biography:

Sihao Cheng (程思浩) is a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study and a senior fellow of the Perimeter Institute. Before that he spent one year at the Ecole Normale Superieure as a visiting fellow. He obtained Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University and Bachelor degree from Peking University. He uses innovative ideas to analyze survey data and make discoveries in astrophysics.  His interest spans widely from cosmology to (exo)planets.