Cherry Ng -- Radio Astronomer
cherry.ng-guiheneuf@cnrs-orleans.fr
linkedin.com/in/cherry-ng

Breakthrough Listen |
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Breakthrough Listen is a 10-year, $100-million initiative that aims to search for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). I work with the BL team and am jointly affiliated with the SETI Institute. My main role as a project scientist is to commission interferometric SETI searches on the MeerKAT telescope in South Africa and the Very Large Array (VLA) in the U.S. |
CHIME |
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CHIME is a recently commissioned radio telescope in British Columbia, Canada. Its innovative design consists of 4 half-pipe-like cylinders placed side by side, spanning a huge collecting area equivalent of 5 hockey arenas. I use CHIME to detect Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and study pulsars. I work with the LW lab on the deployment of the CHIME correlator and signal processing algorithms in high performance computing on GPU. |
NANOGrav |
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NANOGrav is the North American Pulsar timing array collaboration that aims to detect Gravitational Waves (GWs) through the monitoring of an ensemble of millisecond pulsars. I work on high precision pulsar timing analysis, in order to maximize NANOGrav's sensitivity towards GW detections. |
HTRU |
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Using the Parkes Radio telescope in Australia, we conducted the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) survey, an all-sky blind search for new pulsars. I have personally discovered 60 pulsars which at the time equated to 2.5% of the entire known population. |
2023–now | Staff researcher (Chargé de recherche) - Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l’Environnement et de l’Espace (LPC2E), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) |
2021–2023 | Project Scientist – Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto (U of T), Canada and jointly at the SETI Institute and the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center, USA |
2017–2021 | SOSCIP TalentEdge Fellow – Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto (U of T), Canada |
2015–17 | Post-doctoral position – The University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada |
2010–15 | PhD Student – Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), Germany |
Summer 2009 | Pre-graduate trainee – European Space Astronomy Centre, Spain |
Summer 2008 | Research Assistant – University of London Observatory, UK |
2010–15 | PhD in Astronomy – Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR), Germany |
2006–10 | MSci Natural Sciences (Astrophysics major) – University College London (UCL), UK |
2023 onwards | Council member of the Action Spécifique SKA-LOFAR |
2023-2026 | Science & Engineering Advisory Committee for the SKA observatory |
2023-2024 | Exercice de prospective des moyens en Astronomie Committee |
2022-2024 | Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Cradle of Life Working Group co-chair |
2022-2026 | National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) User Committee |
2022-2025 | ngVLA Science Advisory Council Committee | 2021 | NRAO Program Review Panel FY2021 | 2020-2022 | Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) Time Assignment Committee | 2021-2023 | NRAO Telescope Proposal Science Review Panel | 2021 | Dunlap Instrumentation Summer School Planning Committee |
2022 | Vector Institute – Mothers and Machine Learning Scholarship |
2021 | ngVLA Community study award |
2017-2020 | SOSCIP TalentEdge Fellowship |
2016-17 | University of Toronto – Dunlap Visitor Funding |
2006-10 | UCL Undergraduate Pathfinder Scholarship |
2009-10 | UCL Old Students’ Trust |
2008-09 | UCL Alumni Scholarships |
2006-08 | UCL Departmental ‘Sessional Prize’ |
2022 | Astronomy magazine – rising star in Astronomy |
2019 | Dunlap Institute “Dundies award” – media superstar |
2017 | URSI Young Scientist Award |
2015 | 3-minute UBC Postdoc Slam - 2nd prize and the "People's choice" prize |
2014 | Best poster award, WE-Heraeus seminar |
2010-15 | 5.2 million CPU hours on the CAASTRO computer cluster |
2010-19 | 303 telescope hours on the Parkes telescope (PI for project P630, P860) |
2010 | Dean’s List Academic Award – UCL Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
Programming | C++, C, OpenCL, python, shell |
Pulsar tools | Sigproc, Presto, Psrchive, Tempo(2) |
OS | macOS, Windows, Linux |
Others | Latex, GIMP, Wiki, EXCEL, d3, HTML, CSS |
Cantonese | Native |
English | Fluent |
Mandarin | Fluent |
French | Intermediate |
German | Beginner |
Spanish | Beginner |