High-mass Star Formation Group
Students with interest in star formation and radio astronomy are welcome!
Group Members
Qiuyi Luo (Website)
Project Assistant Professor from 09/2026
Currently, Posdoctoral Researcher at Center for Astrophysics |
Harvard & Smithsonian, USA
Research Interest: Formation of multiple systems in low- and high-mass star-forming regions using radio single-dish telescopes and interferometers.
Yu Cheng (Website)
EACOA Fellow based at NAOJ
Research Interest: Study of low- and high-mass star formation, young stellar objects (YSOs) using ALMA and JWST.
Nina Kessler (Website)
Postdoctoral Researcher, JSPS fellow, from 07/2026
Currently, Research Engineer, Laboratoire ' Astrophysique
de Bordeaux, France
Research interest: Study of the molecular richness around high-mass protostars using machine learning techniques.
Fumiaki Yoshida (Website)
Master's Student from 04/2026
Research interest: Early stages of high-mass star formation.
Kongcheng Liu (Website)
Master's Student from 04/2026
Research interest: Formation of multiple stellar systems.
Previous Group Members
Junhao Liu (Website)
Project Researcher (KAKENHI Postdoc) based at NAOJ -->
Now: Assistant Professor
Nanjing University, China
Research Interest: Study of the role of magnetic fields in star formation using polarized dust emission observations obtained with mm/submm interferometers and single-dish telescopes.
Kaho Morii (Website)
PhD student at The University of Tokyo -->
Now: CfA Fellow
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA
Research Interest: Study of the early stages of high-mass star formation in infrared dark clouds (IRDCs).
Qiuyi Luo (Website)
PhD student at Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO),
1 year NAOJ Overseas Intern -->
Project Researcher (KAKENHI Postdoc) at The University of Tokyo -->
Now: Posdoctoral Researcher
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, USA
Research Interest: formation of multiple systems in low- and high-mass star-forming regions using radio single-dish telescopes and interferometers.
Piyali Saha (Website)
Project Researcher (KAKENHI Postdoc) at NAOJ -->
Now: Postdoctoral Fellow
Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, ASIAA, Taiwan
Research Interest: Study of the importance of the magnetic field in the formation of low- and high-mass stars.
Benjamin Wu (Website)
Project Researcher (KAKENHI Postdoc) at NAOJ -->
Now: Senior Solutions Architect at NVIDIA, USA
Research Interest: Simulations of star-forming regions. Now with vast knoledge in machine learning, he is responsible for overseeing the end-to-end architecture of IT solutions.
Close International Collaborators
Students and postdocs in the group usually visit these collaborators abroad.
Qizhou Zhang, Senior Astrophysicist (Website)
Chair of the Radio & Geoastronomy Division
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Boston, USA
Research Interest: star and protostellar cluster formation, magnetic fields and dust polarization, formation of most massive stars, and protostellar disks, jets and outflows.
Josep Miquel Girart, Full Professor (Website)
Institut de Ciences de l'Espai (ICE, CSIC), Barcelona, Spain
Research Interest: early stages of the star and planet formation process, with special emphasis on the role of magnetic field at different scales.
Paulo Cortes, Full Scientist (Website)
Operations Astronomer
Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) and National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Santiago, Chile/USA
Research Interest: Star formation and magnetic fields using radio single-dish and interferometers.
Timea Csengeri, CNRS researcher (Website)
CNRS Researcher
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France
Research Interest: Galactic surveys, high-mass star formation, chemistry using radio single-dish and interferometers.
Close Local Collaborators
With local collaborators, we visit each other very often for scientific discussion.
Fumitaka Nakamura, Associate Professor (Website)
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), Tokyo
Research Interest: Theory, simulations, and observations in star formation.
Kei Tanaka, Assistant Professor (Website)
Institute of Science Tokyo, Tokyo
Research Interest: Theory and observations in high-mass star formation.
Fernando Olguin, Project Assistant Professor (Website)
Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto
Research Interest: Observational high-mass star formation using interferometers.
Takeshi Sakai, Full Professor (Website)
The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo
Research Interest: Chemistry in high-mass star-forming regions and instrument development.
