Welcome!

I am a fourth-year Peirce Fellowship graduate student at Harvard University, working with Prof. Charlie Conroy. I was recently a full-time Research Analyst during the first half of 2023 at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) as part of their Pre-Doctoral Program. I worked with Matteo Cantiello, Mathieu Renzo, and Jared Goldberg. I am originally from Sydney, Australia.

I have worked with Prof. Smadar Naoz, Prof. Michael Fitzgerald, and Prof. Jim Fuller (at the California Institute of Technology) throughout my undergraduate degree at UCLA.

Here, you will find information about my research and links to my publications. If you have any questions about my work, feel free to email me.

Research Interests

I am interested in both theoretical and observational astrophysics. I am currently working with Prof. Charlie Conroy on massive stars, and recently studied stellar evolution in quasar/AGN disks with Prof. Abraham Loeb. I have previously worked on general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black hole accretion disks with Prof. Ramesh Narayan, Matthew Liska, Koushik Chatterjee, and Prof. Sasha Tchekhovskoy. I have also enjoyed working on the dynamical evolution of multi-body systems, tidally excited oscillations in binary heartbeat stars, and improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the Gemini Planet Imager’s polarimeter. My latest published project was completed with Prof. Jim Fuller at the California Institute of Technology and characterized tidally excited oscillations in three Kepler binary heartbeat stars.

ADS publications

Contact Information

Email: shelley.cheng@cfa.harvard.edu