Rate My Professor Hang Yu

Hang Yu is an Assistant Professor of Physics in the Department of Physics at Montana State University. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2019 and his B.S. from Johns Hopkins University in 2014. Before joining Montana State University in 2023, Yu served as a Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar at the California Institute of Technology from 2019 to 2022 and as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, starting in 2022. His career has focused on advancing the understanding of gravitational phenomena through both theoretical modeling and experimental contributions.

Yu's research specializations encompass gravitational-wave astrophysics, compact objects, tidal interactions, and LIGO instrumentation and data analysis. Theoretically, he explores dynamical tides in binary systems, the high-eccentricity migration and evolution of proto-hot Jupiters and coalescing binaries of compact objects, as well as Newtonian and post-Newtonian effects in hierarchical triple systems. Experimentally, he contributes to improving the sensitivity of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and employs machine learning on LIGO data to identify additional binary black hole mergers. He has received NASA funding for his project on dynamical tides in the high-eccentricity migration of close-in exoplanetary systems. Yu has authored or co-authored 269 research works, including key publications such as "Gravitational radiation-driven chaotic tide in a white dwarf-massive black hole binary" (2025), "Effective-one-body model for coalescing binary neutron stars" (2025), "Are WASP-107-like Systems Consistent with High-eccentricity Tidal Migration?" (2024), "Relativistic and Dynamical Love Numbers" (2025), and major contributions to LIGO Scientific Collaboration papers like "Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave counterparts" (2020). His scholarship has amassed over 51,000 citations on Google Scholar, underscoring his significant influence in theoretical astrophysics and gravitational-wave science. Yu advises doctoral students, including Ethan McKeever, recipient of a 2025 NASA FINESST grant for gravitational-wave research.