Wenzer Qin, Ph.D.

Wenzer Qin will join the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University as a postdoctoral fellow working alongside professor Ken Van Tilburg. Wenzer is broadly interested in theoretical cosmology and dark matter phenomenology. One of the goals driving her research is to elucidate the fundamental nature of dark matter by understanding its impact on astrophysical and cosmological probes. For example, she has shown that upcoming data about the earliest stars in our universe could be used to constrain exotic energy injection by dark matter into the visible universe. Wenzer has also studied inflation as a mechanism for producing primordial black holes and developed analytical tools for studying the epochs of cosmic dawn and reionization.

Wenzer is completing her Ph.D. under the supervision of professor Tracy Slatyer in the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was also an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and received the MIT Physics Graduate Student Service Award for her work on increasing equity in graduate student admissions. She previously received her B.S. in physics and B.A. in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University, where she was also a Barry Goldwater Scholar and an APS LeRoy Apker Award finalist.