Guang-Yao Zhao

I am a radio astronomer at the VLBI group of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. Previously, I worked at the Severo Ochoa Center of Excellence in the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) from 2019 to 2022, and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute from 2013 to 2019. I obtained my doctoral degree at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory in 2013.

My research interest is primarily high angular resolution imaging and astrometric studies of supermassive black holes (SMBH) and active galactic nuclei (AGN) at millimeter-wavelengths. I became a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in 2017. Now I am serving as a coordinator of the Scattering working group, which is responsible for characterizing and mitigating the interstellar scattering effects on the EHT observation data of Sgr A. I am also a co-leader of the SMILI imaging team in the Imaging working group, one of the teams that have produced the M87 and Sgr A* images.

Besides the EHT analyses, I am also working on global millimeter VLBI array observations of a binary SMBH candidate, OJ 287, and high precision astrometric observations of AGNs with the Korean VLBI Network (KVN). The KVN is a unique facility designed to overcome specific difficulties of mm-VLBI. One of my current focuses is introducing the KVN-compatible system to the next-generation mm-VLBI telescopes.