Jingyao Zhu, Ph.D.

Jingyao Zhu is a postdoctoral fellow at the City College of Technology, City University of New York (CUNY), working with Ariyeh Maller. She completed her Ph.D. in astronomy at Columbia University in 2026, under the mentorship of Mary Putman and Greg Bryan. Previously, she earned her B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2019.

Zhu investigates how galactic environments shape the evolution of the smallest galaxies. She uses observations from large radio telescopes to trace neutral hydrogen gas, the fuel for star formation, in satellite galaxies orbiting Milky Way-like hosts, and combines observational data with numerical simulations to understand how these galaxies lose their gas and cease forming stars. Her work has provided new insight into the physical processes regulating the baryon cycle and driving gas depletion in low-mass satellite galaxies. At CUNY, Zhu studies how clumpy structures in galactic halos reshape satellite evolution and develops models for the co-evolution of satellites and their host galaxies. She also develops software for analyzing radio telescope data.