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Xin Liu

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Xin Liu

 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0049-5210

Personal profile

Personal profile

Prof. Xin Liu received her B.S. in Physics from Tsinghua University in 2004 and her Ph.D in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 2010 under the guidance of Prof. Michael A. Strauss. Before joining UIUC in 2015, she was a NASA Einstein Fellow at Harvard and a Hubble Fellow at UCLA. 

Research Interests

Astronomical survey and data science

Multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics

AI for science

Professional Information

Astronomy is entering an era where scientific discovery is increasingly limited not by the amount of data we collect, but by our ability to extract reliable physical information from it. We build physics-informed, uncertainty-aware, and trustworthy AI that embeds physical principles, symmetries, and probabilistic reasoning directly into modern machine learning, transforming AI from a black-box prediction tool into a rigorous framework for scientific inference. We develop methods for pixel-level analysis, probabilistic modeling, and interpretable scientific machine learning that maximize the information content of complex astronomical observations while providing robust uncertainty quantification and controlling systematic errors. Although our primary applications are in cosmology, the methodologies we develop are broadly applicable across astronomy and other data-intensive scientific disciplines.

Education

Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 2010
B.S. in Physics, Tsinghua University, 2004

Honors & Awards

Norman P. Jones Professorial Scholar, 2023-2026

Excellent Teacher Ranked by Students, 2023

NCSA Faculty Fellow, 2020 & 2023

Teaching

ASTR 596 - AI and Big Data in Astronomy
ASTR 350 - The Big Bang, Black Holes, and the End of the Universe
ASTR 330 - Extraterrestrial Life

Office Address

210 Astronomy
1002 W. Green St.
Urbana, IL

Office Phone

(217) 265-8073

Education/Academic qualification

Astrophysical Sciences, PhD, Princeton University

Sep 2006 → Aug 31 2010

Award Date: Sep 27 2010

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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  • Galactic-scale Quasar Pairs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Gaia DR3

    Jiang, Y., Shen, Y., Liu, X., Zakamska, N., Zhuang, M. Y., Gross, A. C., Li, J., Chen, Y. C. & Ishikawa, Y., Feb 10 2026, In: Astrophysical Journal. 998, 1, 80.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

    Open Access

  • PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFTS IN JWST DEEP FIELDS: A PIXEL-BASED ALTERNATIVE WITH DEEPDISC

    Merz, G., Zhuang, M. Y., Li, J., Yang, Q., Shen, Y., Liu, X. & Crenshaw, J. F., 2026, In: Open Journal of Astrophysics. 9

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

    Open Access

  • Sloan Digital Sky Survey. V. Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy

    Kollmeier, J. A., Rix, H. W., Aerts, C., Aird, J., Alfaro, P. V., Almeida, A., Anderson, S. F., Arseneau, S. M., Assef, R. J., Aviram, S., Aydar, C., Badenes, C., Bandyopadhyay, A., Barger, K., Barkhouser, R. H., Bauer, F. E., Behmard, A., Bender, C., Besser, F. & Bhattarai, B. & 207 others, Bilgi, P., Bird, J., Bizyaev, D., Blanc, G. A., Blanton, M. R., Bochanski, J., Bovy, J., Brandon, C., Brandt, W. N., Brownstein, J. R., Buchner, J., Burchett, J. N., Carlberg, J., Casey, A. R., Castaneda-Carlos, L., Chakraborty, P., Chanamé, J., Chandra, V., Cherinka, B., Chilingarian, I., Comparat, J., Cosens, M., Covey, K., Crane, J. D., Crumpler, N. R., Cruz-Gonzalez, I., Cunha, K., Cunningham, T., Dai, X., Darling, J., Davidson, J. W., Davis, M. C., De Lee, N., Deacon, N., Méndez Delgado, J. E., Demasi, S., Demianenko, M., Derwent, M., D’Onghia, E., Di Mille, F., Dias, B., Donor, J., Dow, P. N., Drory, N., Dwelly, T., Egorov, O., Egorova, E., El-Badry, K., Engelman, M., Eracleous, M., Fan, X., Farr, E., Fries, L., Frinchaboy, P., Froning, C. S., Gänsicke, B. T., García, P., Gelfand, J., Gentile Fusillo, N. P., Glover, S., Grabowski, K., Grebel, E. K., Green, P. J., Grier, C., Gupta, P., Gray, A. C., Häberle, M., Hall, P. B., Hammond, R. P., Hawkins, K., Harding, A. C., Hegedűs, V., Herbst, T., Hermes, J. J., Hidalgo, P. R., Hilder, T., Hogg, D. W., Holtzman, J. A., Horta, D., Huang, Y., Hwang, H. C., Ibarra-Medel, H. J., Imig, J., Inight, K., Jana, A., Ji, A. P., Jiménez-Arranz, Ó., Jofre, P., Johns, M., Johnson, J., Johnson, J. W., Johnston, E. J., Jones, A. M., Katkov, I., Knapp, G. R., Koekemoer, A. M., Kounkel, M., Kreckel, K., Krishnarao, D., Krumpe, M., Kumari, N., Kupfer, T., Lacerna, I., Laporte, C., Lepine, S., Li, J., Liu, X., Loebman, S., Long, K., Roman-Lopes, A., Lu, Y., Majewski, S. R., Maoz, D., McKinnon, K. A., Medan, I., Merloni, A., Minniti, D., Morrison, S., Myers, N., Mészáros, S., Nandra, K., Nayak, P. K., Ness, M. K., Nidever, D. L., O’Brien, T., Oeur, M., Oravetz, A., Oravetz, D., Otto, J., Pallathadka, G. A., Palunas, P., Pan, K., Pappalardo, D., Pandey, R., Peñaloza, C. A. N., Pinsonneault, M. H., Pogge, R. W., Taghizadeh Popp, M., Price-Whelan, A. M., Pulatova, N., Qiu, D., Ramirez, S., Rankine, A., Ricci, C., Runnoe, J. C., Sanchez, S., Salvato, M., Sarbadhicary, S. K., Sattler, N., Saydjari, A. K., Sayres, C., Schinnerer, E., Schlaufman, K. C., Schneider, D. P., Schreiber, M. R., Schwope, A., Serna, J., Shen, Y., Sifón, C., Singh, A., Sinha, A., Smee, S., Song, Y. Y., Souto, D., Stassun, K. G., Steinmetz, M., Stone-Martinez, A., Stringfellow, G., Stutz, A., Sánchez-Gallego, J., Tan, J. C., Tayar, J., Thai, R., Thakar, A., Ting, Y. S., Tkachenko, A., Tovmassian, G., Trakhtenbrot, B., Fernández-Trincado, J. G., Troup, N., Trump, J., Tuttle, S., van der Marel, R. P., Villanova, S., Villaseñor, J., Wachter, S., Way, Z., Weijmans, A. M., Weinberg, D., Wheeler, A., Wiggins, A. I., Wilson, J., Wofford, A., Wong, T., Wu, Q., Wylezalek, D., Wyse, R. F. G., Xue, X. X., Yang, Q., Ybarra, J., Zakamska, N., Zari, E., Zasowski, G., Zeltyn, G., Zucker, C., Román-Zúñiga, C. G. & de J. Zermeño, R., Jan 2 2026, In: Astronomical Journal. 171, 1, 52.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

    Open Access

  • The Nineteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

    SDSS Collaboration, Jul 2026, In: Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series. 285, 1, 9.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

    Open Access

  • A Systematic Search for Candidate Supermassive Black Hole Binaries Using Periodic Mid-infrared Light Curves of Active Galactic Nuclei

    Luo, D., Jiang, N. & Liu, X., Jan 1 2025, In: Astrophysical Journal. 978, 1, 86.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

    Open Access
View all 100 Research outputs