All the MSE Project Office are delighted to congratulate MSE Science Working Group lead, Ting Li, on being awarded a prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship (http://hubblesite.org/news_release/news/2019-24). Ting, who co-leads the science group on “Astrophysical tests of Dark Matter” has been awarded a Hubble Fellowship under the “How does the Universe Work? (Einstein Fellows)” category, for her research proposal on “Constraining Dark Matter with Stellar Streams and Dark Matter”.

Ting Li works on dark matter, work that appears in the recently updated MSE Detailed Science Case.  Ting’s research focuses on studying the kinematics and chemistry of stars in the dark matter-dominated satellite galaxies and stellar streams of the Milky Way.  Her work will lead to a better understanding of the nature of these structures, their dark matter components, and the formation processes of galaxies like ours.  In addition to her involvement in MSE, she is a scientific leader in both the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) projects, and in her spare time she has led instrumentation development efforts for both DES and DESI as well.

Ting did her PhD at Texas A&M University, under the guidance of MSE Project Scientist Jennifer Marshall. She then went on to do a postdoctoral position at Fermilab, during which time she took up a leadership role in the MSE science team. This recently culminated in the release of the Detailed Science Case of MSE in particular the chapter on focused on constraining the dark matter particle using MSE observations, that she co-lead with Manoj Kaplinghat.

Ting will take her Einstein fellowship, along with a Hubble Fellowship, to Carnegie Observatories, where she will continue her to study the observed properties of dark matter using the Magellan telescopes, as well as other telescopes around the world.  She will also continue to co-lead the MSE Dark Matter Science Working Group, providing important scientific direction for the MSE project.  Congratulations, Ting!