Ang Liu

"The strategies I learned in Go also inspire me a lot in solving the problems I meet in my research"

Life
My name is Ang Liu. I’m a postdoc researcher in MPE. My research career started at Beijing Normal University, where I got my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics. After that, I got my PhD in astrophysics in 2019 at Sapienza University of Rome. I worked as a postdoc in INAF-Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory for one year, and moved to the high energy group of MPE in 2020.

Unlike many researchers who already show interests and enthusiasm in their future research field when they are children, I decided to become an astrophysicist quite late. Before twenty, my interests lay in politics, history, and archaeology. However, things started to change after I finished the first astronomical observation, which was imaging a nebula with a small telescope. The fascinating image made me feel that the ‘history’ of the Universe is more interesting than what has happened and what is happening on a small planet. This weird curiosity motivates me to start working on astronomy.

Science
In general, I’m interested in everything in astrophysics related with observations, from planets to large-scale structure. So far, my research has mostly focused on galaxy clusters and X-ray astronomy. I’m particularly interested in the evolution of galaxy clusters, traced by the thermodynamical and chemical properties of the X-ray emitting intracluster medium, and its link with the formation and evolution of the large-scale structure. In the eROSITA team, I am mainly working on the eROSITA data processing of galaxy clusters, studying their physical properties through imaging and spectral analysis. In the eFEDS project, I’m responsible for the catalog of eROSITA detected galaxy clusters and groups in the eFEDS field. Our team delivered the eFEDS cluster catalog with well-constrained X-ray properties and selection function. I also lead a project to study the chemical enrichment of galaxy clusters by measuring the total amount of iron in the intracluster medium out to the virial radii. Regarding my perspectives for the future, I’ll be focusing on galaxy clusters and X-ray astronomy for a long time, but in the meanwhile I’m always open to other interesting topics.

Interests
Outside astronomy, I spend part of my spare time playing chess and Go. The strategies I learned in Go also inspire me a lot in solving the problems I meet in my research. I also do sports such as basketball, but as age increasing, now I watch NBA matches more than playing outside. I also enjoy cooking, although I’ve never been a good cook. However, I do have the plan that in the far future, probably after 30 years when I am retired, I will go to a cooking school to be trained as a professional cook.