Tingting Liu

Astronomy | Spolaor Group

Research Interests

Tingting's research interests include searching for supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) using various techniques and facilities. An SMBHB is a pair of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) formed when the merger of their host galaxies put them on a collision course. By searching for and studying SMBHBs, astronomers and astrophysicists seek to understand how SMBHs grow and evolve, how accretion physics works in binary SMBH systems, and to observe them as they emit nanohertz gravitational waves.

As an observational astronomer, Tingting uses ground- and space-based telescopes to look for SMBHBs which light up as active galactic nuclei. As a gravitational-wave astrophysicist and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, she is interested in studying SMBHBs with multi-messenger approaches by combining electromagnetic and gravitational-wave data.

Education

Tingting received her B.S. in Physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and Ph.D. in Astronomy from University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to WVU, she was a postdoctoral researcher at University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.