Ray M. Yang

Born and raised in Jinan (济南), China, I moved to New Zealand at a young age and completed my education there. After high school at Avondale College in Auckland, I left the big city to study at the University of Otago in Dunedin. I spent five wonderful years on the South Island, graduating in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honors, majoring in Chemistry and Mathematics, and minoring in Physics. I then returned to Auckland to begin a PhD program in Theoretical Physics under Prof. Joachim Brand at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study, Massey University. My research focused on implementing the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method for bosonic quantum gases, which also introduced me to the modern programming language Julia and research software engineering. After another five rewarding years, including the challenging COVID-19 period, I completed my PhD and received the Dean’s List of Exceptional Doctoral Theses award. In 2022, I moved to the United States for a postdoctoral position at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, working with Prof. Robert Wexler on developing a novel computational method using nested sampling for studying phase transitions.