Luis Ho

Born in Macau and raised in Mozambique, Luis C. Ho immigrated to the United States in 1979, where he received his undergraduate degree in astronomy and physics in 1990 from Harvard University and his doctoral degree in astronomy in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley.  He joined the scientific Staff of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in 1998. In 2014, he moved to Beijing to become the Director of the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at Peking University, where he is a University Chair Professor. He is the Deputy Editor of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Ho is a Fellow of the American Astronomical Society and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ho is an authority on the observational properties and physics of galactic nuclei, the energetic processes that occur when matter falls onto a supermassive black hole, and a broad range of high-energy phenomena that emanate when energy is returned to the large-scale environment of the galaxy. He has introduced a suite of novel experimental methods for measuring fundamental physical properties of galaxies, and then applied them systematically to statistical samples of galaxies to address forefront problems regarding the coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies. Apart from research and mentoring students and postdocs, Ho has been deeply involved in guiding the growth of astronomy in China, including the planning of current and future large telescopes and instruments.