Associate Department Head, Astronomy | Regents Professor | Astronomer, Steward Observatory | Member of the Graduate Faculty | Professor, Astronomy
Dr. Fan is an observational cosmologist. The research of his grouaims at answering questions such as: When did the first luminous objects appear in the Universe? How did the first generations of galaxies and quasars heat uthe intergalactic gas, re-ionize the Universe and end the cosmic dark ages? He has pioneered techniques to search for the most distant quasars in the early universe, at z>6. Using these quasars, he has shown that supermassive black holes with masses uto 10 million solar masses existed within one billion years after the big bang. Meanwhile, the absorption spectra of these quasars reveal a rapid increase in cold atomic gas in the intergalactic medium, marking the end of reionziation epoch at z~6. His grouis currently involved in conducting new surveys of quasars at z>7 using new near-IR large sky surveys, and studies of the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies in the early universe with facilities such as ALMA and HST. He is also involved in studying spectroscopic properties of the first generation galaxies that are responsible to reionization, using LBT, HST, and soon with JWST. In addition, he is working on a project called MAMMOTH" a novel survey of the most massive large scale structure and protocluster environments at the peak of cosmic star formation.