Nan Liu
Cosmochemist · Decoding Galactic chemical history through meteoritic stardust
I am a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Astrophysical Research, Boston University. My research uses in situ isotope measurements of microscopic stardust grains — preserved in primitive meteorites for billions of years — to test theoretical models of stellar nucleosynthesis and trace the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. I received my Ph.D. in Cosmochemistry from the University of Chicago in 2014, and was previously a Research Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis (2018–2022) and a Postdoctoral Associate at Carnegie EPL (2014–2017).
Research
News
| 10/2026 | Invited talk (upcoming) at the 18th International Symposium on Origin and Evolution of Galaxies (OMEG18), RIKEN, Japan. |
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| 09/2026 | Invited talk (upcoming) at Nuclear Physics in Astrophysics XII, Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Meteoritic isotopic anomalies as precision tests of stellar nucleosynthesis. |
| 08/2026 | New paper in Physical Review Letters — the n_TOF Collaboration’s first measurement of the 94Nb(n,γ) cross section brings AGB models into agreement with the 94Mo excess in presolar SiC grains, resolving a two-decade-old discrepancy. |
