Yong-Kun Zhang

National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

I am Yong-Kun Zhang (张永坤), a postdoctoral researcher at the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), where I received my Ph.D. in Astrophysics.

My research spans fast radio bursts (FRBs), Galactic dynamics, and AI4Science. I study FRB emission through burst statistics, energetics and polarization, and develop randomness and chaos diagnostics for burst sequences. I also apply turbulence-analysis methods to star-cluster kinematics to investigate Galactic structure, including the origin of the Radcliffe Wave. I build tools for radio transient searches, calibration and measurement, and am integrating DRAFTS and AFTER into a reproducible workflow that AI agents can operate from telescope data to physical results. For more information, visit my Research Page, Software and Outreach, PhD Thesis and GitHub/SukiYume.

I work with Python, PyTorch, CUDA/CuPy and Linux for GPU computing and radio data analysis. I am fluent in English and Chinese (native) and proficient in Japanese (N2). Outside research, I enjoy photography; you can explore my Gallery.

Technical Skills

My radio astronomy work includes single-pulse searches, coherent and incoherent dedispersion, baseband processing, RFI mitigation, full-Stokes calibration, and measurements of flux, dispersion measure, rotation measure and polarization. I use CUDA/CuPy and PyTorch for GPU computing, and build reproducible analysis workflows with processing records, quality control and diagnostic plots.

Repos

Stars

Commits

PRs

Issues

Followers

Following

Top Repository

DRAFTS 23

Deep learning-based RAdio Fast Transient Search pipeline (DRAFTS)

Python

Working Experience

2024.09 -> now
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)
Postdoctoral Researcher

Education Background

2019.09 - 2024.06
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)
Ph.D. of Astrophysics
2015.09 - 2019.06
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS)
Bachelor of Physics

References

Prof. Di Li
Physics Building, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
dili@tsinghua.edu.cn
Prof. Chao-Wei Tsai
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
cwtsai@nao.cas.cn

Approved Funding

2027 - 2029
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Grant 12603083 / CNY 300,000
Principal Investigator; awarded in 2026
2026 - 2028
National Natural Science Foundation of China
General Program / 12573096 / CNY 530,000
Co-Investigator
2025 - 2027
China Postdoctoral Science Fund
National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (BX20250158) / CNY 880,000
Principal Investigator; supported by the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant Number BX20250158
2025 - 2027
China Postdoctoral Science Fund
General Program / CNY 80,000
Principal Investigator; declined

Honors and Awards

2025.09
Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope Outstanding User (top 5%)
2025.01
2024 RAA Excellent Paper Award (top 0.5%)
2024.07
Chinese Academy of Sciences President Award - Special Prize (top 0.1%)
2024.07
Outstanding Graduate of Beijing (top 1%)
2023.12
National Scholarship for Graduate Student ^[1] (top 0.1%)
2023.08
People's Choice Poster in ACAMAR 9 (top 5%)
2021.05
Merit Student of UCAS (top 10%)

Teaching Experience

2020 - 2022
Advanced Astrophysics (070400M01003H)
Teaching assistant for graduate course at UCAS
Prof. Ji-Feng Liu

Academic Service

2026
Referee for The Astrophysical Journal
2026
Referee for RAS Techniques and Instruments
2025
Referee for The Astrophysical Journal
2024
Referee for Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
2023
Referee for Nature Astronomy

Talks and Colloquia

2026.07
From Single-Pulse Searches to Deep Learning Discovery: Software for Fast Radio Bursts
FRB 2026, Guiyang, China, Invited
2026.04
Tracing a Shear Origin of the Radcliffe Wave from Star Cluster Dynamics |
Workshop on Star Clusters, Nanjing, China
2025.11
Efficient Search and Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Fast Radio Bursts
SWIFAR Lunch Talks, Yunnan, China
2025.09
Radiation Signatures of Fast Radio Bursts Revealed by FAST
FAST Scientific Forum 2nd, Guiyang, China
2025.06
DRAFTS / a Deep learning-based RAdio Fast Transient Search pipeline |
Chinese Fast Radio Burst Conference 2025, Beijing, China
2025.02
FAST Observations of Fast Radio Bursts: Search and Case Analysis |
NAOC Radio Department Lunchtime Meeting, Beijing
2024.11
DRAFTS & An Active Repeating FRB in a Clean Environment
FRB 2024, Thailand
2023.12
The Stochastic Nature of Active Repeating Fast Radio Bursts
DSA Meeting, Online
2023.11
FAST Observations of Fast Radio Burst |
FRB 2023, Online, Invited
2023.11
The Stochastic Nature of Active Repeating Fast Radio Bursts |
FRB 2023, Online
2023.08
The Stochastic Nature of Repeating FRBs
ACAMAR 9, Perth, Australia, Poster
2023.05
The Stochastic Nature of Active Repeating FRBs
Chinese Fast Radio Burst Conference 2023, Hefei, China
2021.09
Time Domain Analysis of two active repeating FRBs
ACAMAR/FRB, Online
2021.07
Periodic Analysis of FRB 121102
FAST/Future Pulsar Symposium 9, Jinan, China

Approved PI Proposals

Eight programmes, totalling 135 awarded hours: 94 hours on FAST and 41 hours on GBT.

2025
- FAST, PT2025_0002, 17 hours
  Searching for Gravitationally Lensed High-Redshift FRBs in Galaxy Cluster Fields with FAST
- FAST, PT2025_0042, 9 hours
  Monitoring FRB20220912A with FAST: Probing Polarization and Spectral Evolution in a Hyperactive Repeater
2024
- FAST, PT2024_0148, 9 hours
  Monitoring an active repeating FRB in a clean environment
- FAST, PT2024_0263, 6 hours
  A Mini Survey for White Dwarf Pulsar
2023
- FAST, PT2023_0100, 9 hours
  Do All Active Repeating FRBs Have Complex Magnetic Environments?
2022
- GBT, GBT/22A-502, 41 hours
  Monitoring FRB 20200120E in a Globular Cluster for Polarization Insights
- FAST, PT2022_0067, 24 hours
  Constrain the Relation between Fast Radio Bursts and Star Formation Rates
2021
- FAST, PT2021_0039, 20 hours
  Do all fast radio bursts repeat?

Software and Outreach

DRAFTS / A deep-learning pipeline for radio transient searches, combining GPU dedispersion, object detection and neural-network classification. Reprocessing existing FAST observations of FRB20190520B expanded the burst sample from 75 to 258, recovering 183 additional bursts and revising its activity statistics. Code, trained models and training data are publicly available.
AFTER / An analysis framework that takes burst times and observation metadata through extraction, full-Stokes calibration and reviewed measurements of flux, dispersion measure, rotation measure and polarization. Processing records, uncertainty estimates and quality checks support reproducible analyses. AI agents can operate the workflow, and integration with DRAFTS is in progress.
nasa-ads-skill / Astronomy literature tools for AI agents, covering searches, paper reading, citation checks and export, with source provenance and reusable reading records.

MSP / RadioSonify / My radio-data sonification project, now released as the RadioSonify package, converts radio observations into audio.
- Based on this project, I created a video titled "Sounds from the Depths of the Universe", which was given as a gift to new students at UCAS in 2020. The video was widely shared by media outlets such as People's Daily and CCTV News, receiving widespread acclaim.
- See more examples, please visit the sonify page.
CHIME VOEvents / This is the website I built to summarize CHIME VOEvents.
APOD / A public daily reading journal of astro-ph papers that I have maintained since 2020.
XiaoQing / Based on web scraping and large language models, I created my AI assistant, XiaoQing (小青).

Publications

My CV records 60 refereed papers and 5 preprints, including 5 first- or co-first-author papers and 4 corresponding-author papers, as of 10 October 2026. I also hold 1 granted patent.

Find Full Paper List in ADS or ORCID.

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Most prestigious scholarship for graduate student in China ↩︎

Yong-Kun Zhang

Technical Skills ​

Working Experience ​

Education Background ​

References ​

Approved Funding ​

Honors and Awards ​

Teaching Experience ​

Academic Service ​

Talks and Colloquia ​

Approved PI Proposals ​

Software and Outreach ​

Publications ​