Ting Li
Assistant Professor
Research:
Galactic archaeology, metal-poor stars, stellar spectroscopy, large scale sky surveys, optical instrumentation
Education:
Ph.D. 2016, Texas A&M University
Ting’s research focuses on near-field cosmology. In particular, she studies the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and nearby galaxies to understand how they form and to understand the nature of dark matter. She specializes in analyzing large data sets from modern surveys and also performs traditional astronomical observations with optical and near-infrared telescopes. Ting also builds astronomical instruments and contributes to infrastructure work for large-area sky surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES), Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), and others. She is the founder and leader of the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5), a survey to map streams of stars in the sky visible from the Southern Hemisphere to determine the mass profile of the Milky Way. She is also one of the convenors of the DES Milky Way Working Group, as well as one of the Dark Matter Working Group co-chairs of the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, a 11.25-meter telescope facility dedicated to the next generation spectroscopic surveys.
